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AN 






INLAND VOYAGE 



/ 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, 

AUTHOR OF "travels WITH A DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES, 
"new ARABIAN NIGHTS," ETC. 



" Thus sans i^^y i» t^'^c English boaty — Marvell. 



BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS 

1883. 




^' 



*^ 



i 



S-V 



" Robert Louis Stevenson is, in his own way, one of the most perfect 
writers living." — Philip Gilbert Hamerton. 

" ' Travels with a Donkey ' is charming, full of grace, and humor, and 
freshness. Such refined humor it is, too, and so evidently the work of a 
gentleman. I am half in love with him, and much inclined to think that 
a ramble anywhere with such a companion must be worth taking. What 
a happy knack he has of giving the taste of a landscape or any out-door 
Impression in ten words I " 



PREFACE. 



To equip so small a book with a preface is, 
I am half afraid, to sin against proportion. 
But a preface is more than an author can re- 
sist, for it is the reward of his labors. When 
the foundation stone is laid, the architect 
appears with his plans, and struts for an hour 
before the public eye. So with the writer in 
his preface : he may have never a word to 
say, but he must show himself for a moment 
in the portico, hat in hand, and with an ur- 
bane demeanor. 

It is best, in such circumstance, to repre- 
sent a delicate shade of manner between hu- 
mility and superiority : as if the book had 
been written by some one else, and you had 



vi Preface. 

merely run over it and inserted what was 
good. But for my part I have not yet 
learned the trick to that perfection ; I am 
not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my 
sentiments towards a reader ; and if I meet 
him on the threshold, it is to invite him in 
with country cordiality. 

To say truth, I had no sooner finished 
reading this little book in proof than I was 
seized upon by a distressing apprehension. 

It occurred to me that I might not only be 
the first to read these pages, but the last as 
well ; that I might have pioneered this very 
smiling tract of country all in vain, and find 
not a soul to follow in my steps. The more 
I thought, the more I disliked the notion ; 
until the distaste grew into a sort of panic 
terror, and I rushed into this Preface, which 
is no more than an advertisement for readers. 

What am I to say for my book \ Caleb 



Preface. vii 

and Joshica brought back from Palestine 3. 
formidable bunch of grapes ; alas ! my book 
produces naught so nourishing ; and for the 
matter of that, we live in an age when peo- 
ple prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit. 

I wonder, would a negative be found enti- 
cing ? for, from the negative point of view, I 
flatter myself this volume has a certain 
stamp. Although it runs to considerably 
upwards of two hundred pages, it contains 
not a single reference to the imbecility of 
God's universe, nor so much as a single hint 
that I could have made a better one myself, 
— I really do not know where my head can 
have been. I seemed to have forgotten all 
that makes it glorious to be man. 'T is an 
omission that renders the book philosophi- 
cally unimportant ; but I am in hopes the 
eccentricity may please in frivolous circles. 

To the friend who accompanied me I owe 



viii Preface. 

many thanks already, indeed I wish I owed 
him nothing else ; but at this moment I feel 
towards him an almost exaggerated tender- 
ness. He, at least, will become my reader, 
— if it were only to follow his own travels 
alongside of mine. 

R. L. S. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGB 

ANTWERP TO BOOM 1 1 

ON THE WILLEBROtK CANAL .... 20 

THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 3^ 

AT MAUBEUGE 43 

ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED : TO QUAKTES . . S3 

PONT-SUR-SAMBUE : — 

WE ARE PEDLARS 65 

THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT .... 77 

ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED: TO LANDRECIES . Sj 

AT LANDJIECIES 9^ 

SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL: CANAL BOATS . . I08 

THE OISE IN FLOOD I18 

ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOtTE : — 

A BY-DAY 134 

THE COMPANY AT TACLE .... 147 

DOWN THE OISE: TO MOY 160 



X Contents. 

PAGB 

LA F&RE OF CURSED MEMORY I7I 

DOWN THE OISE : THROUGH THE GULDEN VALLEY 183 

NOYON CATHEDRAL 187 

DOWN THE OISE: TO COMPIEGNE . ... I97 

AT COMPIEGNE 202 

CHANGED TIMES 212 

DOWN THE OISE : CHURCH INTERIORS . . . 224 

PR]i:CY AND THE MARIONETTES .... 238 

BACK TO THE WORLD 258 



AN INLAND VOYAGE. 



ANTWERP TO BOOM. 

We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. 
A stevedore and a lot of dock porters took 
up the two canoes, and ran with them for 
the slip. A crowd of children followed cheer- 
ing. The Cigarette went off in a splash and 
a bubble of small breaking water. Next 
moment the Arethusa was after her. A 
steamer was coming down, men on the pad- 
dle-box shouted hoarse warnings, the steve- 
dore and his porters were bawling from the 
quay. But in a stroke or two the canoes 
were away out in the middle of the Scheldt^ 



12 A71 Inland Voyage, 

and all steamers, and stevedores, and other 
'long-shore vanities were left behind. 

The sun shone brightly ; the tide was 
making — four jolly miles an hour; the wind 
blew steadily, with occasional squalls. For 
my part, I had never been in a canoe under 
sail in my life ; and my first experiment out 
in the middle of this big river was not made 
without some trepidation. What would hap- 
pen when the wind first caught my little can- 
vas } I suppose it was almost as trying a 
venture into the regions of the unknown as 
to publish a first book, or to marry. But my 
doubts were not of long duration ; and in 
five minutes you will not be surprised to 
learn that I had tied my sheet. 

I own I was a little struck by this circum- 
stance myself; of course, in company with 
the rest of my fellow-men, I had always tied 
the sheet in a sailing-boat ; but in so little 



Antwerp to Boom* 13 

and crank a concern as a canoe, and with 
these charging squalls, I was not prepared to 
find myself follow the same principle ; and it 
inspired me with some contemptuous views 
of our regard for life. It is certainly easier 
to smoke with the sheet fastened ; but I had 
never before weighed a comfortable pipe of 
tobacco against an obvious risk, and gravely 
elected for the comfortable pipe. It is a 
commonplace, that we cannot answer for 
ourselves before we have been tried. But it 
is not so common a reflection, and surely 
more consoling, that we usually find our- 
selves a great deal braver and better than we 
thought; I believe this is every one's expe- 
rience: but an apprehension that they may 
belie themselves in the future prevents man- 
kind from trumpeting this cheerful senti- 
ment abroad. I wish sincerely, for it would 
have saved me much trouble, there had been 



14 All Inland Voyage. 

some one to put me in a good heart about 
life when I was younger ; to tell me how 
dangers are most portentous on a distant 
sight ; and how the good in a man's spirit 
will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and 
rarely or never deserts him in the hour of 
need. But we are all for tootling on the 
sentimental flute in literature ; and not a 
man among us will go to the head of the 
march to sound the heady drums. 

It was agreeable upon the river. A barge 
or two went past laden with hay. Reeds 
and willows bordered the stream ; and cattle 
and gray, venerable horses came and hung 
their mild heads over the embankment. 
Here and there was a pleasant village among 
trees, with a noisy shipping yard ; here and 
there a villa in a lawn. The wind served us 
well up the Scheldt and thereafter up the 
Rupel ; and we were running pretty free 



Antwerp to Boom. 15 

when we began to sight the brickyards of 
Boom, lying for a long way on the right 
bank of the river. The left bank was still 
green and pastoral, with alleys of trees 
along the embankment, and here and there 
a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where per- 
haps there sat a woman with her elbows on 
her knees, or an old gentleman with a staff 
and silver spectacles. But Boo7n and its 
brickyards grew smokier and shabbier with 
every minute ; until a great church with a 
clock, and a wooden bridge over the river, 
indicated the central quarters of the town. 

Boom is not a nice place, and is only re- 
markable for one thing : that the majority 
of the inhabitants have a private opinion 
that they can speak English, which is not 
justified by fact. This gave a kind of hazi- 
ness to our intercourse. As for the Hotel 
de la Navigation, I think it is the worst fea- 



1 6 An Inlmid Voyage. 

ture of the place. It boasts of a sanded 
parlor, with a bar at one end, looking on 
the street ; and another sanded parlor, 
darker and colder, with an empty bird-cage 
and a tricolor subscription box by way of 
sole adornment, where we made shift to 
dine in the company of three uncommuni- 
cative engineer apprentices and a silent bag- 
man. The food, as usual in Belgiumy was 
of a nondescript occasional character ; in- 
deed I have never been able to detect any- 
thing in the nature of a meal among this 
pleasing people ; they seem to peck and 
trifle with viands all day long in an amateur 
spirit : tentatively French, truly German, 
and somehow falling between the two. 

The empty bird-cage, swept and garnished, 
and. with no trace of the old piping favor- 
ite, save where two wires had been pushed 
apart to hold its lump of sugar, carried with 



Antwerp to Boom, \*J 

it a sort of graveyard cheer. The engineer 
apprentices would have nothing to say to 
tis, nor indeed to the bagman ; but talked 
low and sparingly to one another, or raked 
us in the gaslight with a gleam of specta- 
cles. For though handsome lads, they were 
all (in the Scotch phrase) barnacled. 

There was an English maid in the hotel, 
who had been long enough out of England 
to pick up all sorts of funny foreign idioms, 
and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which 
need not here be specified. She spoke to us 
very fluently in her jargon, asked us infor- 
mation as to the manners of the present 
day iji England^ and obligingly corrected us 
when we attempted to answer. But as we 
were dealing with a woman, perhaps our 
information was not so much thrown away 
as it appeared. The sex likes to pick up 
knowledge and yet preserve its superiority. 



1 8 An Liland Voyage. 

It is good policy, and almost necessary in 
the circumstances. If a man finds a woman 
admires him, were it only for his acquaint- 
ance with geography, he will begin at once 
to build upon the admiration. It is only by 
unintermittent snubbing that the pretty 
ones can keep us in our place. Men, as 
Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would have 
said, "are such encroackers.''* For my part, 
I am body and soul with the women ; and 
after a well-married couple, there is nothing 
so beautiful in the world as the myth of 
the divine huntress. It is no use for a man 
to take to the woods ; we know him ; Ajt- 
thony tried the same thing long ago, and 
had a pitiful time of it by all accounts. 
But there is this about some women, which 
overtops the best gymnosophist among 
men, that they suffice to themselves, and 
can walk in a high and cold zone without 
the countenance of any trousered being. 



Antwerp to Boom. 19 

I declare, although the reverse of a pro- 
fessed ascetic, I am more obliged to women 
for this ideal than I should be to the ma- 
jority of them, or indeed to any but one, 
for a spontaneous kiss. There is nothing 
so encouraging as the spectacle of self- 
sufficiency. And when I think of the slim 
and lovely maidens, running the woods all 
night to the note of Diaitcis horn ; moving 
among the old oaks, as fancy-free as they ; 
things of the forest and the starlight, not 
touched by the commotion of man's hot 
and turbid life — although there are plenty 
other ideals that I should prefer — I find 
my heart beat at the thought of this one. 
'Tis to fail in life, but to fail with what a 
grace ! That is not lost which is not re- 
gretted. And where — here slips out the 
male — where would be much of the glory 
of inspiring love, if there were no contempt 
to overcome? 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL. 

Next morning, when we set forth on the 
Willebroek Canal, the rain began heavy and 
chill. The water of the canal stood at about 
the drinking temperature of tea ; and under 
this cold aspersion, the surface was covered 
with steam. The exhilaration of departure, 
and the easy motion of the boats under each 
stroke of the paddles, supported us through 
this misfortune while it lasted; and when 
the cloud passed and the sun came out 
again, our spirits went up above the range 
of stay-at-home humors. A good breeze 
rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that 
bordered the canal. The leaves flickered in 
and out of the light in tumultuous masses. 



On the Willebroek Canal. 21 

It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear; 
but down between the banks, the wind 
reached us only in faint and desultory puffs. 
There was hardly enough to steer by. Pro- 
gress was intermittent and unsatisfactory. 
A jocular person, of marine antecedents, 
hailed us from the tow-path with a " C est 
vitey inais c est long'' 

The canal was busy enough. Every now 
and then we met or overtook a long string of 
boats, with great green tillers ; high sterns 
with a window on either side of the rudder, 
and perhaps a jug or a flower-pot in one of 
the windows ; a dingy following behind ; a 
woman busied about the day's dinner, and a 
handful of children. These barges were all 
tied one behind the other with tow ropes, to 
the number of twenty-five or thirty ; and the 
line was headed and kept in motion by a 
steamer of strange construction. It had 



22 A 71 Inland Voyage. 

neither paddle-wheel nor screw ; but by 
some gear not rightly comprehensible to the 
unmechanica] mind, it fetched up over its 
bow a small bright chain which lay along the 
bottom of the canal, and paying it out again 
over the stern, dragged itself forward, link 
by link, with its whole retinue of loaded 
scows. Until one had found out the key to 
the enigma, there was something solemn and 
uncomfortable in the progress of one of 
these trains, as it moved gently along the 
water with nothing to mark its advance but 
an eddy alongside dying away into the wake. 
Of all the creatures of commercial enter- 
prise, a canal barge is by far the most de- 
lightful to consider. It may spread its sails, 
and then you see it sailing high above the 
tree-tops and the wind-mill, sailing on the 
aqueduct, sailing through the green corn- 
lands : the most picturesque of things am- 



On the Willebroek Canal. 23 

phibious. Or the horse plods along at a 
foot-pace as if there were no such thing as 
business in the world ; and the man dream- 
ing at the tiller sees the same spire on the 
horizon all day long. It is a mystery how 
things ever get to their destination at this 
rate ; and to see the barges waiting their 
turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how 
easily the world may be taken. There 
should be many contented spirits on board, 
for such a life is both to travel and to stay 
at home. 

The chimney smokes for dinner as you go 
along ; the banks of the canal slowly unroll 
their scenery to contemplative eyes ; the 
barge floats by great forests and through 
great cities with their public buildings and 
their lamps at night ; and for the bargee, in 
his floating home, *' travelling abed," it is 
merely as if he were listening to another 



24 An Inland Voyage, 

man's story or turning the leaves of a pic- 
ture book in whicli he had no concern. He 
may take his afternoon walk in some foreign 
country on the banks of the canal, and then 
come home to dinner at his own fireside. 

There is not enough exercise in such a 
life for any high measure of health ; but a 
high measure of health is only necessary for 
unhealthy people. The slug of a fellow, who 
is never ill nor well, has a quiet time of it in 
life, and dies all the easier. 

I am sure I would rather be a bargee than 
occupy any position under Heaven that re- 
quired attendance at an office. There are 
few callings, I should say, where a man gives 
up less of his liberty in return for regular 
meals. The bargee is on shipboard ; he is 
master in his own ship ; he can land when- 
ever he will ; he can never be kept beating 
off a lee-shore a whole frosty night when the 



On the Willebroek Canal. 25 

sheets are as hard as iron ; and so far as I 
can make out, time stands as nearly still 
with him as is compatible with the return of 
bedtime or the dinner-hour. It is not easy 
to see why a bargee should ever die. 

Half-way between Willebroek and Ville- 
vorde, in a beautiful reach of canal like a 
squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch. 
There were two eggs, a junk of bread, and a 
bottle of wine on board the Arethusa; and 
two eggs and an Etna cooking apparatus on 
board the Cigarette. The master of the 
latter boat smashed one of the eggs in the 
course of disembarkation ; but observing 
pleasantly that it might still be cooked a la 
papier^ he dropped it into the Etna, in its 
covering of Flemish newspaper. We landed 
in a blink of fine weather ; but we had not 
been two minutes ashore before the wind 
freshened into half a gale, and the rain be- 



26 Aji Inland Voyage. 

gan to patter on our shoulders. We sat as 
close about the Etna as we could. The 
spirits burned with great ostentation ; the 
grass caught flame every minute or two, and 
had to be trodden out ; and before long there 
were several burnt fingers of the party. But 
the solid quantity of cookery accomplished 
was out of proportion with so much display ; 
and when we desisted, after two applications 
of the fire, the sound Qgg was a little more 
than loo-warm ; and as for a la papier ^ it was 
a cold and ^oxd\.di fricassee of printer's ink and 
broken egg-shell. We made shift to roast 
the other two by putting them close to the 
burning spirits, and that with better success. 
And then we uncorked the bottle of wine, 
and sat down in a ditch with our canoe 
aprons over our knees. It rained smartly. 
Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfort- 
able and makes no nauseous pretensions to 



On the Willebroek CaitaL 27 

the contrary, is a vastly humorous business ; 
and people well steeped and stupefied in the 
open air are in a good vein for laughter. 
From this point 'of view, even o.^^ a la papier 
offered by way of food may pass muster as a 
sort of accessory to the fun. But this man 
ner of jest, although it may be taken in good 
part, does not invite repetition ; and from 
that time forward the Etna voyaged like a 
gentleman in the locker of the Cigarette. 

It is almost unnecessary to mention that 
when lunch was over and we got aboard 
again and made sail, the wind promptly died 
away. The rest of the journey to Villevorde 
we still spread our canvas to the unfavoring 
air, and with now and then a puff, and now 
and then a spell of paddling, drifted along 
from lock to lock between the orderly trees. 

It was a fine, green, fat landscape, or 
rather a mere green water-lane going on 



28 A7t Inland Voyage. 

from village to village. Things had a set- 
tled look, as in places long lived in. Crop- 
headed children spat upon us from the 
bridges as we went below, with a true con- 
servative feeling. But even more conserva- 
tive were the fishermen, intent upon their 
floats, who let us go by without one glance. 
They perched upon sterlings and buttresses 
and along the slope of the embankment, 
gently occupied. They were indifferent like 
pieces of dead nature. They did not move 
any more than if they had been fishing in an 
old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered, the 
water lapped, but they continued in one stay, 
nke so many churches established by law. 
You might have trepanned every one of their 
innocent heads and found no more than so 
much coiled fishing line below their skulls. 
I do not care for your stalwart fellows in 
India-rubber stockings breasting up moun 



0?i the Willebroek Canal, 29 

tain torrents with a salmon rod ; but I do 
dearly love the class of man who plies his 
unfruitful art forever and a day by still and 
depopulated waters. 

At the lock just beyond Villevorde there 
was a lock mistress who spoke French com- 
prehensibly, and told us we were still a 
couple of leagues from Brussels. At the 
same place the rain began again. It fell in 
straight, parallel lines, and the surface of 
the canal was thrown up into an infinity of 
little crystal fountains. There were no beds 
to be had in the neighborhood. Njothing for 
it but to lay the sails aside and address our- 
selves to steady paddling in the rain. 

Beautiful country houses, with clocks and 
long lines of shuttered windows, and fine old 
trees standing in groves and avenues, gave 
a rich and sombre aspect in the rain and the 
deepening dusk to the shores of the canal. 



30 Ajt Inland Voyage. 

I seem to have seen something of the same 
effect in engravings : opulent landscapes, de- 
serted and overhung with the passage of 
storm. And throughout we had the escort 
of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily 
along the tow-path, and kept at an almost 
uniform distance in our wake. 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE. 

The rain took off near Laekeit. But the 
sun was already down ; the air was chill ; 
and we had scarcely a dry stitch between the 
pair of us. Nay, now we found ourselves near 
the end of the Allee Verte, and on the very 
threshold of Brussels we were confronted by 
a serious difficulty. The shores were closely 
lined by canal boats waiting their turn at the 
lock. Nowhere was there any convenient 
landing place ; nowhere so much as a stable- 
yard to leave the canoes in for the night. 
We scrambled ashore and entered an estami- 
net where some sorry fellows were drinking 
with the landlord. The landlord was pretty 
round with us ; he knew of no coach-house or 



32 A?i Inland Voyage. 

stable-yard, nothing of the sort ; and seeing 
we had come with no mind to drink, he did 
not conceal his impatience to be rid of us. 
One of the sorry fellows came to the rescue. 
Somewhere in the corner of the basin there 
was a slip, he informed us, and something 
else besides, not very clearly defined by him, 
but hopefully construed by his hearers. 

Sure enough there was the slip in the cor- 
ner of the basin ; and at the top of it two 
nice-looking lads in boating clothes. The 
Arethusa addressed himself to these. One 
of them said there would be no difficulty 
about a night's lodging for our boats ; and 
the other, taking a cigarette from his lips, 
inquired if they were made by Searle & Son. 
The name was quite an introduction. Half 
a dozen other young men came out of a boat- 
house bearing the superscription Royal 
Sport Nautique, and joined in the talk. 



The Royal Sport Natitiqtte. 33 

They were all very polite, voluble, and en- 
thusiastic ; and their discourse was inter- 
larded with English boating terms, and the 
names of English boat-builders and English 
clubs. I do not know, to my shame, any 
spot in my native land where I should have 
been so warmly received by the same num- 
ber of people. We were English boating- 
men, and the Belgian boating-men fell upon 
our necks. I wonder if French Huguenots 
were as cordially greeted by English Protest- 
ants when they came across the Channel 
out of great tribulation. But, after all, what 
religion knits people so closely as common 
sport t 

The canoes were carried into the boat- 
house ; they were washed down for us by the 
club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, 
and everything made as snug and tidy as a 
picture. And in the mean while we were led 
3 



34 An Inland Voyage, 

up-stairs by our new-found brethren, for so 
more than one of them stated the relation- 
ship, and made free of their lavatory. This 
one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third 
and fourth helped us to undo our bags. And 
all the time such questions, such assurances 
of respect and sympathy ! I declare I never 
knew what glory was before. 

" Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Nautique is the 
oldest club in BelghmiJ' 

" We number two hundred." 

" We " — this is not a substantive speech, 
but an abstract of many speeches, the im- 
pression left upon my mind after a great 
deal of talk ; and very youthful, pleasant, nat- 
ural, and patriotic it seems to me to be — 
"We have gained all races, except those 
where we were cheated by the FrenckJ* 

" You must leave all your wet things to be 
dried." 



The Royal Sport Nautique, 35 

"O! entre frcres ! In any boat-house in 
England "WQ should find the same." (I cor- 
dially hope they might.) 

*^ En Angleterre, vous employ ez des sliding^ 
seats y nest-cepasf 

"We are all employed in commerce during 
the day ; but in the evening, voyez-vous^ nous 
sommes serienx^ 

These were the words. They were all 
employed over the frivolous mercantile con- 
cerns of Belgium during the day ; but in the 
evening they found some hours for the seri- 
ous concerns of life. I may have a wrong 
idea of wisdom, but I think that was a very 
wise remark. People connected with litera- 
ture and philosophy are busy all their days 
m getting rid of second-hand notions and 
false standards. It is their profession, in the 
sweat of their brows, by dogged thinking, to 
recover their old fresh view of life, and dis- 



36 An Inland Voyage, 

tinguish what they really and originally like 
from what they have only learned to tolerate 
perforce. And these Royal Nautical Sports- 
men had the distinction still quite legible in 
their hearts. They had still those clean per- 
ceptions of what is nice and nasty, what is 
interesting and what is dull, which envious 
old gentlemen refer to as illusions. The 
nightmare illusion of middle age, the bear's 
hug of custom gradually squeezing the life 
out of a man's soul, had not yet begun for 
these happy-star'd young Belgians. They 
still knew that the interest they took in 
their business was a trifling affair compared 
to their spontaneous, long-suffering affection 
for nautical sports. To know what you pre- 
fer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what 
the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to 
have kept your soul alive. Such a man may 
be generous; he may be honest in something 



The Royal Sport Nautique, 37 

more than the commercial sense ; he may 
love his friends with an elective, personal 
sympathy, and not accept them as an adjunct 
of the station to which he has been called. 
He may be a man, in short, acting on his 
own instincts, keeping in his own shape 
that God made him in ; and not a mere 
crank in the social engine house, welded 
on principles that he does not understand, 
and for purposes that he does not care 
for. 

For will any one dare to tell me that busi- 
ness is more entertaining than fooling among 
boats ? He must have never seen a boat, or 
never seen an office, who says so. And for 
certain the one is a great deal better for the 
.health. There should be nothing so much a 
man's business as his amusements. Noth- 
ing but money-grubbing can be put forward 
to the contrary ; no one but 



38 An Inland Voyage. 

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From Heaven, 

durst risk a word in answer. It is but a 
lying cant that would represent the mer- 
chant and the banker as people disinter- 
estedly toiling for mankind, and then most 
useful when they are most absorbed in their 
transactions ; for the man is more important 
than his services. And when my Royal 
Nautical Sportsman shall have so far fallen 
from his hopeful youth that he cannot pluck 
up an enthusiasm over anything but his 
ledger, I venture to doubt whether he will be 
near so nice a fellow, and whether he would 
welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of 
drenched Englishmen paddling into Brussels 
in the dusk. 

When we had changed our wet clothes and 
drunk a glass of pale ale to the club's pros- 
perity, one of their number escorted us to a 



TJie Royal Sport Nautiqtte. 39 

hotel. He would not join us at our dinner, 
but he had no objection to a glass of wine. 
Enthusiasm is very wearing ; and I begin to 
understand why prophets were unpopular in 
yudcea, where they were best known. For 
three stricken hours did this excellent young 
man sit beside us to dilate on boats and 
boat-races ; and before he left, he was kind 
enough to order our bedroom candles. 

We endeavored now and again to change 
the subject ; but the diversion did not last 
a moment : the Royal Nautical Sportsman 
bridled, shied, answered the question, and 
then breasted once more into the swelling 
tide of his subject. I call it his subject ; but 
I think it was he who was subjected. The 
Aretlmsay who holds all racing as a creature 
of the devil, found himself in a pitiful 
dilemma. He durst not own his ignorance 
for the honor of old Englandy and spoke 



40 An Inland Voyage, 

away about English clubs and English oars- 
men whose fame had never before come to 
his ears. Several times, and, once above all, 
on the question of sliding-seats, he was 
within an ace of exposure. As for the Ciga- 
fettCy who has rowed races in the heat of his 
blood, but now disowns these slips of his 
wanton youth, his case was still more des- 
perate ; for the Royal Nazctical "pro^pos^d that 
he should take an oar in one of their eights 
on the morrow, to compare the English with 
the Belgian stroke. I could see my friend 
perspiring in his chair whenever that partic- 
ular topic came up. And there was yet 
another proposal which had the same effect 
on both of us. It appeared that the cham- 
pion canoeist of Europe (as well as most 
other champions) was a Royal Nautical 
Sportsman. And if we would only wait 
until the Sundayy this infernal paddler would 



The Royal Sport NaiUique, 41 

be so condescending as to accompany us on 
our next stage. Neither of us liad the least 
desire to drive the coursers of the sun 
against Apollo. 

When the young man was gone, we coun- 
termanded our candles, and ordered some 
brandy and water. The great billows had 
gone over our head. The • Royal Nautical 
Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a 
man would wish to see, but they were a 
trifle too young and a thought too nautical 
for us. We began to see that we were old 
and cynical ; we liked ease and the agree- 
able rambling of the human mind about 
this and the other subject ; we did not 
want to disgrace our native land by mess- 
ing at eight, or toiling pitifully in the 
wake of the champion canoeist. In short, 
we had recourse to flight. It seemed un- 
grateful, but we tried to make that good 



42 Alt Inland Voyage. 

on a card loaded with sincere compliments. 
And indeed it was no time for scruples ; 
we seemed to feel the hot breath of the 
champion on our necks. 



AT MAUBEUGE. 

Partly from the terror we had of our 
good friends the Royal Naicticals^ partly from 
the fact that there were no fewer than fifty- 
five locks between Brussels and Charleroi, we 
concluded that we should travel by train 
across the frontier, boats and all. Fifty-five 
locks in a day's journey was pretty well tan- 
tamount to trudging the whole distance on 
foot, with the canoes upon our shoulders, an 
object of astonishment to the trees on the 
canal side, and of honest derision to all right- 
thinking children. 

To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a 
difficult matter for the Arethusa. He is, 
somehow or other, a marked man for the offi- 



44 An Inland Voyage, 

cial eye. Wherever he journeys, there are 
the officers gathered together. Treaties are 
solemnly signed, foreign ministers, ambassa- 
dors, and consuls sit throned in state from 
Chma to Peril, and the Union Jack flutters 
on all the winds of heaven. Under these 
safeguards, portly clergymen, school-mis- 
tresses, gentlemen in gray tweed suits, and 
all the ruck and rabble of British touristry 
pour unhindered, Murray in hand, over the 
railways of the Continent, and yet the slim 
person of the AretJmsa is taken in the 
meshes, while these great fish go on their 
way rejoicing. If he travels without a pass- 
port, he is a cast, without any figure about 
the matter, into noisome dungeons : if his 
papers are in order, he is suffered to go his 
way indeed, but not until he has been humil- 
iated by a general incredulity. He is a born 
British subject, yet he has never succeeded 



At Matibeuge, 45 

in persuading a single official of his nation- 
ality. He flatters himself he is indifferent 
honest ; yet he is rarely known for anything 
better than a spy, and there is no absurd and 
disreputable means of livelihood but has been 
attributed to him in some heat of official or 
popular distrust. . . . 

For the life of me I cannot understand it. 
I, too, have been knolled to church and sat 
at good men's feasts, but I bear no mark of 
it. I am as strange as a Jack Indian to their 
official spectacles. I might come from any 
part of the globe, it seems, except from 
where I do. My ancestors have labored in 
vain, and. the glorious Constitution cannot 
protect me in my walks abroad. It is a 
great thing, believe me, to present a good 
normal type of the nation you belong to. 

Nobody else Wcis asked for his papers 
on the way to Maubeuge^ but I was; and 



46 An Inland Voyage, 

although I clung to my rights, I had to choose 
at last between accepting the humiliation 
and being left behind by the train. I was 
sorry to give way, but I wanted to get to 
Maubeuge. 

Maiibeuge is a fortified town with a very 
good inn, the Grand Ccrf. It seemed to be 
inhabited principally by soldiers and bagmen ; 
at least, these were all that we saw except 
the hotel servants. We had to stay there 
some time, for the canoes were in no hurry 
to follow us, and at last stuck hopelessly in 
the custom-house until we went back to 
liberate them. There was nothing to do, 
nothing to see. We had good meals, which 
was a great matter, but that was all. 

The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a 
charge of drawing the fortifications : a feat 
of which he was hopelessly incapable. And 
besides, as I suppose each belligerent nation 



At Maubeuge, 47 

has a plan of the other's fortified places al- 
ready, these precautions are of the nature 
of shutting the stable door after the steed is 
away. But I have no doubt they help to 
keep up a good spirit at home. It is a great 
thing if you can persuade people that they 
are somehow or other partakers in a mystery. 
It makes them feel bigger. Even the Free- 
masons, who have been shown up to satiety, 
preserve a kind of pride ; and not a grocer 
among them, however honest, harmless, and 
empty-headed he may feel himself to be at 
bottom, but comes home from one of their 
coenacula with a portentous significance for 
himself. • 

It is ^n odd thing how happily two people, 
if there are two, can live in a place where 
they have no acquaintance. I think the 
spectacle of a whole life in which you have 
no part paralyzes personal desire. You are 



48 . An Inland Voyage, 

content to become a mere spectator. The 
baker stands in his door ; the colonel with 
his three medals goes by to the cafe at 
night ; the troops drum and trmnpet and 
man the ramparts as bold as so many lions. 
It would task language to say how placidly 
you behold all this. In a place where you 
have taken some root you are provoked out 
of your indifference ; you have a hand in the 
game, — your friends are fighting with the 
army. But in a strange town, not small 
enough to grow too soon familiar, nor so 
large as to have laid itself out for travellers, 
you stand so far apart from the business 
that you positively forget it would be pos- 
sible to go nearer ; you have so little human 
interest around you that you do not remem- 
ber yourself to be a man. Perhaps in a very 
short time you would be one no longer. 
Gymnosophists go into a wood with all na- 



At Maubeuge, 49 

ture seething around them, with romance on 
every side ; it would be much more to the 
purpose if they took up their abode in a dull 
country town where they should see just so 
much of humanity as to keep them from 
desiring more, and only the stale externals 
of man's life. These externals are as dead 
to us as so many formalities, and speak a 
dead language in our eyes and ears. They 
have no more meaning than an oath or a sal- 
utation. We are so much accustomed to see 
married couples going to church of a Simday 
that we have clean forgotten what they 
represent ; and novelists are driven to reha- 
bilitate a,dultery, no less, when they wish to 
show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man 
and a woman to live for each other. 

One person in Mmibeugey however, showed 
me something more than his outside. That 
was the driver of the hotel omnibus : a mean- 
4 



50 Alt Inland Voyage. 

enough looking little man, as well as I can 
remember, but with a spark of something 
human in his soul. He had heard of our 
little journey, and came to me at once in en- 
vious sympathy. How he longed to travel ! 
he told me. How he longed to be some- 
where else, and see the round world before 
he went into the grave ! " Here I am," said 
he. " I drive to the station. Well. And 
then I drive back again to the hotel. And 
so on every day and all the week round. My 
Gody is that life.?" I could not say I 
thought it was — for him. He pressed me to 
tell him where I had been, and where I 
hoped to go ; and as he listened, I declare 
the fellow sighed. Might not this have been 
a brave African traveller, or gone to the /;/- 
dies ?iitQ,r Drake ? But it is an evil age for 
the gypsily inclined among men. He who 
can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he 
it is who has the wealth and glory. 



A I Maiibeuge. 51 

I wonder if my friend is still driving the 
omnibus for the Grand Cerfl Not very 
likely, I believe ; for I think he was on the 
eve of mutiny when we passed through, and 
perhaps our passage determined him for 
good. Better a thousand times that he 
should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans 
by the wayside, and sleep under trees, and 
see the dawn and the sunset every day above 
a new horizon. I think I hear you say that 
it is a respectable position to drive an omni- 
bus } Very well. What right has he who 
likes it not to keep those who would like 
it dearly out of this respectable position ? 
Suppose a dish were not to my taste, and 
you told me that it was a favorite among the 
rest of the company, what should I conclude 
from that } Not to finish the dish against 
my stomach, I suppose. 

Respectability is a very good thing in 



52 Ajt Inland Voyage. 

its wa^/, but it does not rise superior to all 
considerations. I would not for a moment 
venture to hint that it was a matter of 
taste ; but I think I will go as far as this : 
that if a position is admittedly unkind, un- 
comfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously 
useless, although it were as respectable as 
the Church of England, the sooner a man 
is out of it, the better for himself, and all 
concerned. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED. 

TO QUARTES. 

About three in the afternoon the whole 
establishment of the Grand Cerf accompa- 
nied us to the water's edge. The man of 
the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. 
Poor cage-bird ! Do I not remember the 
time when I myself haunted the station, to 
watch train after train carry its comple- 
ment of freemen into the night, and read 
the names of distant places on the time- 
bills with indescribable longings.'* 

We were not clear of the fortifications 
before the rain began. The wind was con- 
trary, and blew in furious gusts ; nor were 
the aspects of nature any more clement 



54 -^^^ Inland Voyage. 

than the doings of the sky. For we passed 
through a blighted country, sparsely cov- 
ered with brush, but handsomely enough 
diversified with factory chimneys. We 
landed in a soiled meadow among some 
pollards, and there smoked a pipe in a flaw 
of fair weather. But the wind blew so 
hard we could get little else to smoke. 
There were no natural objects in the 
neighborhood, but some sordid workshops. 
A group of children, headed by a tall girl, 
stood and watched us from a little distance 
all the time we stayed. I heartily wonder 
what they thought of us. 

At Hantjnonty the lock was almost im- 
passable ; the landing place being steep and 
high, and the launch at a long distance. 
Near a dozen grimy workmen lent us a 
hand. They refused any reward ; and, what 
is much better, refused it handsomely, with- 



On the Sambre Canalized. 55 

out conveying any sense of insult. " It is 
a way we have in our country-side," said 
they. And a very becoming way it is. In 
Scotlandy where also you will get services 
for nothing, the good people reject your 
money as if you had been trying to corrupt 
a voter. When people take the trouble to 
do dignified acts, it is worth while to take 
a little more, and allow the dignity to be 
common to all concerned But in our brave 
Saxon countries, where we plod threescore 
years and ten in the mud, and the wind 
keeps singing in our ears from birth to bur- 
ial, we do our good and bad with a high 
hand and almost offensively ; and make 
even our alms a witness-bearing and an act 
of war against the wrong. 

After HautmonL the sun came forth 
again and the wind went down ; and a lit- 
tle paddling took us beyond the iron works 



56 A 71 hilaJid Voyage. 

and through a delectable land. The river 
wound among low hills, so that sometimes 
the sun was at our backs and sometimes 
it stood right ahead, and the river before 
us was one sheet of intolerable glory. On 
either hand meadows and orchards bor- 
dered, with a margin of sedge and water 
flowers, upon the river. The hedges were 
of great height, woven about the trunks of 
hedgerow elms ; and the fields, as they were 
often very small, looked like a series of bow- 
ers along the stream. There was never any 
prospect ; sometimes a hill-top with its trees 
would look over the nearest hedgerow, just 
to make a middle distance for the sky ; but 
that was all. The heaven was bare of 
clouds. The atmosphere, after the rain, was 
of enchanting purity. The river doubled 
among the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror 
glass ; and the dip of the paddles set the 
flowers shaking along the brink. 



On the Sambre Canalized. 57 

In the meadows wandered black and white 
cattle fantastically marked. One beast, with 
a white head and the rest of the body glossy 
black, came to the edge to drink, and stood 
gravely twitching his ears at me as I went 
by, like some sort of preposterous clergyman 
in a play. A moment after I heard a loud 
plunge, and, turning my head, saw the 
clergyman struggling to shore. The bank 
had given way under his feet. 

Besides the cattle, we saw no living things 
except a few birds and a great many fisher- 
men. These sat along the edges of the 
meadows, sometimes with one rod, some- 
times with as many as half a score. They 
seemed stupefied with contentment ; and, 
when we induced them to exchange a few 
words with us about the weather, their 
voices sounded quiet and far away. There 
was a strange diversity of opinion among 



58 A7i Inland Voyage. 

them as to the kind of fish for which they 
set their lures ; although they were all 
agreed in this, that the river was abun- 
dantly supplied. Where it was plain that 
no two of them had ever caught the same 
kind of fish, we could not help suspecting 
that perhaps not any one of them had ever 
caught a fish at all. I hope, since the after- 
noon was so lovely, that they were one and 
all rewarded; and that a silver booty wen 
home in every basket for the pot. Some 
of my friends would cry shame on me for 
this ; but I prefer a man, were he only an 
angler, to the bravest pair of gills in all 
God's waters. I do not affect fishes unless 
when cooked in sauce ; whereas an angler is 
an important piece of river scenery, and 
hence deserves some recognition among 
canoeists. He can always tell you where 
you are, after a mild fashion ; and his quiet 



On the Sarnbre Canalized, 59 

presence serves to accentuate the solitude 
and stillness, and remind you of the glitter- 
ing citizens below your boat. 

Th^ .Sarnbre turned so industriously to 
and fro among his little hills that it was 
past six before we drew near the lock at 
Quartes. There were some children on the 
tow-path, with whom the Cigarette fell into 
a chaffing talk as they ran along beside us. 
It was in vain that I warned him. In vain 
I told him in English that boys were the 
most dangerous creatures ; and if once you 
began with them, it was safe to end in a 
shower of stones. For my own part, when- 
ever anything was addressed to me, I smiJed 
gently and shook my head, as though I 
were an inoffensive person inadequately ac- 
quainted with French. For, indeed, I have 
had such an experience at home that I 
would sooner meet many wild animals than 
a troop of healthy urchins. 



6o An Inland Voyage. 

But I was doing injustice to these peace- 
able young Hainaulters. When the Cigar- 
ette went off to make inquiries, I got out 
upon the bank to smoke a pipe and superin- 
tend the boats, and became at once the cen- 
tre of much amiable curiosity. The children 
had been joined by this time by a young 
woman and a mild lad who had lost an arm ; 
and this gave me more security. When I 
let slip my first word or so in French, a little 
girl nodded her head with a comical grown- 
up air. "Ah, you see," she said, "he under- 
stands well enough now; he was just mak- 
ing believe." And the little group laughed 
together very good-naturedly. 

They were much impressed when they 
heard we came from E^igland ; and the 
little girl proffered the information that 
England was an island " and a far way from 
here — bie7i loin d'iciy 



On the Sainbre Canalized, 6 1 

" Ay, you may say that, a far way from 
here," said .the lad with one arm. 

I was nearly as homesick as ever I was 
in my life ; they seemed to make it such an 
incalculable distance to the place where I 
first saw the day. 

They admired the canoes very much. 
And I observed one piece of delicacy in 
these children which is worthy of record. 
They had been deafening us for the last 
hundred yards with petitions for a sail ; ay, 
and they deafened us to the same tune next 
morning when we came to start ; but then, 
when the canoes were lying empty, there 
was no word of any such petition. Deli- 
cacy } or perhaps a bit of fear for the water 
in so crank a vessel .^ I hate cynicism a 
great deal worse than I do the devil ; unless 
perhaps, the two were the same thing } And 
yet 't is a good tonic ; the cold tub and bath- 



62 An Inland Voyage. 

towel of the sentiments; and positively ne- 
cessary to life in cases of advanced sensi- 
bility, ^i 

From the boats they turned to my cos- 
tume. They could not make enough of my 
red sash ; and my knife filled them with 
awe. 

**They make them like that in England!' 
said the boy with one arm. I" was glad he 
did not know how badly we make them in 
England nowadays. "They are for people 
who go away to sea," he added, "and to 
defend one's life against great fish." 

I felt I was becoming a more and more 
romantic figure to the little group at every 
word. And so I suppose I was. Even my . 
pipe, although it was an ordinary French 
clay, pretty well "trousered," as they call 
it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as a 
thing coming from so far away. And if my 



On the Sambre Canalized, 63 

feathers were not very fine in themselves, 
they were all from over seas. One thing in 
my outfit, however, tickled them out of all 
politeness ; and that was the bemired con- 
dition of my canvas shoes. I suppose they 
were sure the mud at any rate was a home 
product. The little girl (who was the 
genius of the party) displayed her own 
sabots in competition; and I wish you could 
have seen how gracefully and merrily she 
did it. 

The young woman's milk-can, a great am- 
phora of hammered brass, stood some way 
off upon the sward. I was glad of an oppor- 
tunity to divert public attention from myself 
and return some of the compliments I had 
received. So I admired it cordially both for 
form and color, telling them, and very truly, 
that it was as beautiful as gold. They were 
not surprised. The things were plainly the 



64 ^Ji Inland Voyage, \ 

boast of the country-side. And the chil- 
dren expatiated on the costliness of these | 
amphorc^, which sell sometimes as high as 
thirty francs apiece ; told me how they were I 
carried on donkeys, one on either side of the j 
saddle, a brave aparison in themselves ; and ! 
how they were to be seen all over the dis- 
trict, and at the larger farms in great num- 
ber and of great size. ■ 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE. 

WE ARE PEDLARS. 

The Cigarette returned with good news. 
There were beds to be had some ten min- 
utes' walk from where we were, at a place 
called Pont, We stowed the canoes in a 
granary, and asked among the children for 
a guide. The circle at once widened round 
us, and our offers of reward were received 
in dispiriting silence. We were plainly a 
pair of Bluebeards to the children ; they 
might speak to us in public places, and 
where they had the advantage of numbers ; 
but it was another thing to venture ofE alone 
with two uncouth and legendary characters, 
who had dropped from the clouds upon their 



66 An Inland Voyage, 

hamlet this quiet afternoon, sashed and be- 
knived, and with a flavor of great voyages. 
The owner of the granary came to our as- 
sistance, singled out one little fellow, and 
threatened him with corporalities ; or I sus- 
pect we should have had to find the way for 
ourselves. As it was, he was more fright- 
ened at the granary man than the strangers, 
having perhaps had some experience of the 
former. But I fancy his little heart must 
have been going at a fine rate, for he kept 
trotting at a respectful distance in front, and 
looking back at us with scared eyes. Not 
otherwise may the children of the young 
world have guided yove or one of his Olym- 
plan compeers on an adventure. 

A miry lane led us up from Quartes, with 
its church and bickering windmill. The 
hinds were trudging homewards from the 
fields. A brisk little old woman passed us 



Pont-sur-Sambre, 6/ 

by. She was seated across a donkey be- 
tween a pair of glittering milk-cans, and, as 
she went, she kicked jauntily with her heels 
upon the donkey's side, and scattered shrill 
remarks among the wayfarers. It was nota- 
ble that none of the tired men took the 
trouble to reply. Our conductor soon led 
us out of the lane and across country. 
The sun had gone down, but the west in 
front of us was one lake of level gold. The 
path wandered a while in the open, and then 
passed under a trellis like a bower indefi- 
nitely prolonged. On either hand were shad- 
owy orchards ; cottages lay low among the 
leaves and sent their smoke to heaven ; 
every here and there, in an opening, ap- 
peared the great gold face of the west. 

I never saw the Cigarette in such an idyllic 
frame of mind. He waxed positively lyrical 
in praise of country scenes. I was little 



6S An Inland Voyage, 

less exhilarated myself ; the mild air of the 
evening, the shadows, the rich lights, and 
the silence made a symphonious accompani- 
ment about our walk ; and we both deter- 
mined to avoid towns for the future and 
sleep in hamlets. 

At last the path went between two houses, 
and turned the party out into a wide, muddy 
high-road, bordered, as far as the eye could 
reach on either hand by an unsightly vil- 
lage. The houses stood well back, leaving 
a ribbon of waste land on either side of the 
road, where there were stacks of firewood, 
carts, barrows, rubbish heaps, and a little 
doubtful grass. Away on the left, a gaunt 
tower stood in the middle of the street. 
What it had been in past ages I know not : 
probably a hold in time of war ; but nowa- 
days it bore an illegible dial-plate in its 
upper parts, and near the bottom an iron 
letter-box. 



Pont-siir-Sarnbre. 69 

The inn to which we had been recom- 
mended at Quartes was full, or else the land- 
lady did not like our looks. I ought to say, 
that with our long, damp india-rubber bags, 
we presented rather a doubtful type of civili- 
zation : like rag-and-bone men, the Cigarette 
imagined. '* These gentlemen are pedlars ? " 
— Ces messieurs sont des marchands? — asked 
the landlady. And then, without waiting 
for an answer, which I suppose she thought 
superfluous in so plain a case, recommended 
us to a butcher who lived hard by the tower 
and took in travellers to lodge. 

Thither went we. But the butcher was 
flitting, and all his beds were taken down. 
Or else he did n't like our look. As a part- 
ing shot, we had, " These gentlemen are 
pedlars .-* " 

It began to grow dark in earnest. We 
could no longer distinguish the faces of 



70 An hiland Voyage. 

the people who passed us by with an in- 
articulate good evening. And the house- 
holders of Pont seemed very economical 
with their oil, for we saw not a single win- 
dow lighted in all that long village. I be- 
lieve it is the longest village in the world ; 
but I daresay in our predicament every pace 
counted three times over. We were much 
cast down when we came to the last aitbergey 
and, looking in at the dark door, asked tim- 
idly if we could sleep there for the night. 
A female voice assented, in no very friendly 
tones. We clapped the bags down and 
found our way to chairs. 

The place was in total darkness, save a 
red glow in the chinks and ventilators of the 
stove. But now the landlady lit a lamp to 
see her new guests ; I suppose the darkness 
was what saved us another expulsion, for I 
cannot say she looked gratified at our ap- 



Pont-sur-Sambre. 71 

pearance. We were in a large, bare apart- 
ment, adorned with two allegorical prints of 
Music and Painting, and a copy of the Law 
against Public Drunkenness. On one side 
there was a bit of a bar, with some half a 
dozen bottles. Two laborers sat waiting 
supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness ; a 

plain-looking lass bustled about with a sleepy 

J* 
child of two, and the landlady began to de- 
range the pots upon the stove and set some 
beef steak to grill. 

"These gentlemen are pedlars .^ " she asked 
siiarply ; and that was all the conversation 
forthcoming. We began to think we might 
be pedlars, after all. I never knew a popu- 
lation with so narrow a range of conjecture 
as the innkeepers of Pont-siir^Sambre, But 
manners and bearing have not a wider cur- 
rency than bank-notes. You have only to 
get far enough out of your beat, and all 



72 Aft Inland Voyage, 

your accomplished airs will go for nothing. 
These Hainaulters could see no difference 
between us and the average pedlar. Indeed, 
we had some grounds for reflection while the 
steak was getting ready, to see how per- 
fectly they accepted us at their own valua- 
tion, and how our best politeness and best 
efforts at entertainment seemed to fit quite 
suitably with the character of packmen. At 
least it seemed a good account of the pro- 
fession in France, that even before such 
judges we could not beat them at our own 
weapons. 

At last we were called to table. The two 
hinds (and one of them looked sadly worn 
and white in the face, as though sick with 
over-work and under-feeding) supped off 
a single plate of some sort of bread-berry, 
some potatoes in their jackets, a small cup 
of coffee sweetened with sugar candy, and 



Pont-sur-Samhre, 73 

one tumbler of swipes. The landlady, her 
son, and the lass aforesaid took the same 
Our meal was quite a banquet by compari- 
son. We had some beef-steak, not so ten- 
der as it might have been, some of the pota- 
toes, some cheese, an extra glass of the 
swipes, and white sugar in our coffee. 

You see what it is to be a gentleman, — 
I beg your pardon, what it is to be a pedlar. 
It had not before occurred to me that a 
pedlar was a great man in a laborer's ale- 
house ; but now that I had to enact the part 
for the evening, I found that so it was. He 
has in his hedge quarters somewhat the 
same pre-eminency as the man who takes a 
private parlor in a hotel. The more you 
look into it the more infinite are the class 
distinctions among men ; and possibly, by a 
happy dispensation, there is no one at all at 
the bottom of the scale ; no one but can 



74 A^t Inland Voyage. '\ 

find some superiority over somebody else, \ 
to keep up his pride withal. 

We were displeased enough with our fare. \ 

Particularly the Cigarette; for I tried to i 
make believe that I was amused with the 
adventure, tough beef-steak and all. Accord- 
ing to the Lucretian maxim, our steak should 
have been flavored by the look of the other 

people's bread-berry ; but we did not find i 

it so in practice. You may have a head i 
knowledge that other people live more 

poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable ! 

— I was going to say, it is against the eti- ' 

quette of the universe — to sit at the same ! 

table and pick your own superior diet from j 
among their crusts. I had not seen such a 

thing done since the greedy boy at school ' 

with his birthday cake. It was odious i 

enough to witness, I could remember ; and I i 

had never thought to play the part myself. ! 



Po7tt-stir-Sambre» 75 

But there, again, you see what it is to be a 
pedlar. 

There is no doubt that the poorer classes 
in our country are much more charitably 
disposed than their superiors in wealth. 
And I fancy it must arise a great deal from 
the comparative indistinction of the easy 
and the not so easy in these ranks. A work- 
man or a pedlar cannot shutter himself off 
from his less comfortable neighbors. If he 
treats himself to a luxury, he must do it in 
the face of a dozen who cannot. And what 
should more directly lead to charitable 
thoughts .^. . . Thus the poor man, camping 
out in life, sees it as it is, and knows that 
every mouthful he puts in his belly has been 
wrenched out of the fingers of the hungry. 

But at a certain stage of prosperity, as 
in a balloon ascent, the fortunate person 
passes through a zone of clouds, and sub- 



76 An Inland Voyage, 

lunary matters are thenceforward hidden 
from his view. He sees nothing but the 
heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and 
positively as good as new. He finds himself 
surrounded in the most touching manner by 
the attentions of Providence, and compares 
himself involuntarily with the lilies and the 
skylarks. He does not precisely sing, of 
course ; but then he looks so unassuming in 
his open Landau ! If all the world dined at 
one table, this philosophy would meet with 
some rude knocks. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE. 

THE TRAVELLING MERCHANT. 

Like the lackeys in Molieres farce, when 
the true noblemen broke in on their high life 
below stairs, we were destined to be con- 
fronted with a real pedlar. To make the 
lesson still more poignant for fallen gentle- 
men like us, he was a pedlar of infinitely 
more consideration than the sort of scurvy 
fellows we were taken for ; like a lion among 
mice, or a ship of war bearing down upon 
two cock-boats. Indeed, he did not deserve 
the name of pedlar at all ; he was a travel- 
ling merchant. 

I suppose it was about half past eight 
when this worthy, Monsieur Hector Gilliardj 



78 Ajt Inland Voyage. 

of Maubeuge, turned up at the alehouse door 
in a tilt cart drawn by a donkey, and cried 
cheerily on the inhabitants. He was a lean, 
nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, with some- 
thing the look of an actor and something 
the look of a horse jockey. He had evi- 
dently prospered without any of the favors 
of education, for he adhered with stern sim- 
plicity to the masculine gender, and in the 
course of the evening passed off some fancy 
futures in a very florid style of architecture. 
With him came his wife, a comely young 
woman, with her hair tied in a yellow ker- 
chief, and their son, a little fellow of four, 
in a blouse and military ypi. It was nota- 
ble that the child was many degrees better 
dressed than either of the parents. We 
were informed he was already at a boarding 
school ; but the holidays having just com- 
menced, he was off to spend them with his 



Pont-sur-Sambre, 79 

parents on a cruise. An enchanting holi- 
day occupation, was it not ? to travel all 
day with father and mother in the tilt cart 
full of countless treasures; the green coun- 
try rattling by on either side, and the chil- 
dren in all the villages contemplating him 
with envy and wonder. It is better fun, 
during the holidays, to be the son of a trav- 
elling merchant, than son and heir to the 
greatest cotton spinner in creation. And 
as for being a reigning prince, — indeed, I 
never saw one if it was not Master Gilliard ! 
While M. Hector and the son of the 
house were . putting up the donkey and get- 
ting all the valuables under lock and key, 
the landlady warmed up the remains of our 
beef-steak and fried the cold potatoes in 
slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to 
waken the boy, who had come far that day, 
and was peevish and dazzled by the light. 



8o An Inland Voyage, 

He was no sooner awake than he began to 
prepare himself for supper by eating galette, 
unripe pears, and cold potatoes, with, so 
far as I could judge, positive benefit to his 
appetite. 

The landlady, fired with motherly emula- 
tion, awoke her own little girl, and the two 
children were confronted Master Gilliard 
looked at her for a moment, very much as a 
dog looks at his own reflection in a mirror 
before he turns away. He was at that time 
absorbed in the galette. His mother seemed 
crestfallen that he should display so little 
inclination towards the other sex, and ex- 
pressed her disappointment with some can- 
dor and a very proper reference to the influ- 
ence of years. 

Sure enough a time will come when he 
will pay more attention to the girls, and 
think a great deal less of his mother ; let us 



Pont-sur- Sambre, 8 1 

hope she will like it as well as she seemed 
to fancy. But it is odd enough ; the very 
women who profess most contempt for man- 
kind as a sex seem to find even its ugliest 
particulars rather lively and high-minded in 
their own sons. 

The little girl looked longer and with 
more interest, probably because she was in 
her own house, while he was a traveller and 
accustomed to strange sights. And, besides, 
there was no galette in the case with her. 

All the time of supper there was nothing 
spoken of but my young lord. The two 
parents were both absurdly^ fond of their 
child. Monsieur kept insisting on his sa- 
gacity ; how he knew all the children at 
school by name, and when this utterly failed 
on trial, how he was cautious and exact to 
a strange degree, and if asked anything, he 
would sit and think — and think, and if he 



82 An Inland Voyage. 

did not know it, " my faith, he would n't tell 
you at all — ma foi, il ne votes le dira pas!' 
Which is certainly a very high degree of 
caution. At intervals, M. -Hector would ap- 
peal to his wife, with his mouth full of beef- 
steak, as to the little fellow's age at such or 
such a time when he had said or done some- 
thing memorable ; and I noticed that Ma- 
dame usually poohpoohed these inquiries. 
She herself was not boastful in her vein ; 
but she never had her fill of caressing the 
child ; and she seemed to take a gentle 
pleasure in recalling all that was fortunate 
in his little existence. No school-boy could 
have talked more of the holidays which were 
just beginning and less of the black school- 
time which must inevitably follow after. 
She showed, with a pride perhaps partly 
mercantile in origin, his pockets preposte'r- 
ously swollen with tops, and whistles, and 



Pont-sur-Sambre. 83 

string. When she called at a house in the 
way of business, it appeared he kept her 
company ; and, whenever a sale was made, 
received a sou out of the profit. Indeed, 
they spoiled him vastly, these two good 
people. But they had an eye to his man- 
ners, for all that, and reproved him for some 
little faults in breeding which occurred from 
time to time during supper. 

On the whole, I was not much hurt at 
being taken for a pedlar. I might think 
that I ate with greater delicacy, or that my 
mistakes in French belonged to a different 
order ; but it was plain that these distinc- 
tions would be thrown away upon the land- 
lady and the two laborers. In all essential 
things we and the Gilliards cut very much 
the same figure in the alehouse kitchen. 
M. Hector was more at home, indeed, and 
took a higher tone with the world ; but that 



84 A^i Inland Voyage. 

was explicable on the ground of his driving 
a donkey-cart, while we poor bodies tramped 
afoot. I dare say the rest of the company 
thought us dying with envy, though in no 
ill sense, to be as far up in the profession as 
the new arrival. 

And of one thing I am sure ; that every- 
one thawed and became more humanized 
and conversible as soon as these innocent 
people appeared upon the scene. I would 
not very readily trust the travelling mer- 
chant with any extravagant sum of money, 
but I am sure his heart was in the right 
place. In this mixed world, if you can find 
one or two sensible places in a man ; above 
all, if you should find a whole family living 
together on such pleasant terms, you may 
surely be satisfied, and take the rest for 
granted ; or, what is a great deal better, 
boldly make up your mind that you can do 



Pont'Sur-Sambre, 85 

perfectly weii without the rest, and that ten 
thousand bad traits cannot make a single 
good one any the less good. 

It was getting late, M. Hector lit a stable 
lantern and went off to his cart for some 
arrangements, and my young gentleman pro- 
ceeded to divest himself of the better part 
of his raiment and play gymnastics on his 
mother's lap, and thence on to the floor, 
with accompaniment of laughter. 

" Are you going to sleep alone .'' " asked 
the servant lass. 

** There's little fear of that," says Master 
Gil Hard. 

"You sleep alone at school," objected his 
mother. " Come, come, you must be a man." 

But he protested that school was a differ- 
ent matter from the holidays ; that there 
were dormitories at school, and silenced the 
discussion with kisses, his mother smiling, 
no one better pleased than she. 



86 Au Inland Voyage, 

There certainly was, as he phrased it, 
very little fear that he should sleep alone, 
for there was but one bed for the trio. We, 
on our part, had firmly protested against one 
man's accommodation for two ; and we had 
a double-bedded pen in the loft of the house, 
furnished, beside the beds, with exactly 
three hat pegs and one table. There was 
not so much as a glass of water. But the 
window would open, by good fortune. 

Some time before I fell asleep the loft was 
full of the sound of mighty snoring ; the 
Gilliards, and the labdrers, and the people 
of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with one con- 
sent. The young moon outside shone very 
clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre^ and down upon 
the alehouse where all we pedlars were abed. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED. 

TO LANDRECIES. 

In the morning, when we came down- 
stairs the landlady pointed out to us two 
pails of water behind the street door. *' Voild 
de Veati pour vous debarbotiiller^' says she. 
And so there we made a shift to wash our- 
selves, while Madame Gilliard brushed the 
family boots on the outer doorstep, and M. 
HectoVy whistling cheerily, arranged some 
small goods for the day's campaign in a 
portable chest of drawers, which formed a 
part of his baggage. Meanwhile the child 
was letting off Waterloo crackers all over the 
floor. 

I wonder, by the by, what they call Water- 



88 An Inland Voyage. 

loo crackers in France; perhaps Austerlitz 
crackers. There is a great deal in the point 
of view. Do you remember the Frenchman 
who, travelling by way of Southamptony was 
put down in Waterloo Station, and had to 
drive across Waterloo Bridge .'' He had a 
mind to go home again, it seems. 

Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it 
is ten minutes' walk from Quartes by dry 
land, it is six weary kilometres by water. 
We left our bags at the inn and walked to 
our canoes through the wet orchards unen- 
cumbered. Some of the children were there 
to see us off, but we were no longer the 
mysterious beings of the night before. A 
departure is much less romantic than an un- 
explained arrival in the golden evening. 
Although we might be greatly taken at a 
ghost's first appearance, we should behold 
him vanish with comparative equanimity. 



On the Sambre Canalized, 89 

The good folks of the inn at Pont, when 
we called there for the bags, were overcome 
with marvelling. At the sight of these two 
dainty little boats, with a fluttering Union 
Jack on each, and all the varnish shining 
from the sponge, they began to perceive that 
they had entertained angels unawares. The 
landlady stood upon the bridge, probably 
lamenting she had charged so little ; the son 
ran to and fro, and called out the neighbors 
to enjoy the sight ; and we paddled away 
from quite a crowd of rapt observers. 
These gentlemen pedlars, indeed ! Now you 
see their quality too late. 

The whole day was showery, with occa- 
sional drenching plumps. We were soaked 
to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, 
then soaked once more. But there were 
some calm intervals, and one notably, when 
we were skirting the forest of Mormaly a 



QO Ajz Inland Voyage. 

sinister name to the ear, but a place most 
gratifying to sight and smell. It looked 
solemn along the river-side, drooping its 
boughs into the water, and piling them up 
aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a forest 
but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and 
innocuous living things, where there is noth- 
ing dead and nothing made with the hands, 
but the citizens themselves are the houses 
and public monuments ? There is nothing so 
much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland ; 
and a pair of people, swinging past in canoes, 
feel very small and bustling by comparison. 

And, surely, of all smells in the world the 
smell of many trees is the sweetest and 
most fortifying. The sea has a rude pis- 
tolling sort of odor, that takes you in the 
nostrils like snuff, and carries with it a fine 
sentiment of open water and tall ships ; but 
the smell of a forest, which comes nearest 



On the Sambre Canalized, 91 

to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by many 
degrees in the quality of softness. Again, 
the smell of the sea has little variety, but 
the smell of a forest is infinitely changeful ; 
it varies with the hour of the day, not in 
strength merely, but in character ; and the 
different sorts of trees, as you go from one 
zone of the wood to another, seem, to live 
among different kinds of atmosphere. Usu- 
ally, the rosin of the fir predominates. But 
some woods are more coquettish in their 
habits ; and the breath of the forest Mormaly 
as it came aboard upon us' that showery 
afternoon, was perfumed with nothing less 
delicate than sweetbrier. 

I wish our way had always lain among 
woods. Trees are the most civil society. 
An old oak that has been growing where 
he stands since before the Reformation, 
taller than many spires, more stately than the 



92 An Inland Voyage. 

greater part of mountains, and yet a living 
thing, liable to sicknesses and death, like you 
and me : is not that in itseJf a speaking lesson 
in history ? But acres on acres full of such 
patriarchs contiguously rooted, their green 
tops billowing in the wind, their stalwart 
younglings pushing up about their knees ; 
a whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving 
color to the light, giving perfume to the air ; 
what is this but the most imposing piece 
in nature's repertory ? Heine wished to lie 
like Merlin under the oaks of Broceliaride. 
I should not be satisfied with one tree ; but 
if the wood grew together like a banyan 
grove, I would be buried under the tap-root 
of the whole ; my parts should circulate from 
oak to oak ; and my consciousness should be 
diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a 
common heart to that assembly of green 
spires, so that it, also, might rejoice in its 



On the Sambre Canalized, 93 

own loveliness and dignity. I think I feel a 
thousand squirrels leaping from bough to 
bough in my vast mausoleum ; and the birds 
and the winds merrily coursing over its 
uneven, leafy surface. 

Alas ! the forest of Mormal is only a little 
bit of a wood, and it was but for a little way 
that we skirted by its boundaries. And the 
rest of the time the rain kept coming in 
squirts and the wind in squalls, until one's 
heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding 
weather. It was odd how the showers be- 
gan when we had to carry the boats over 
a lock and must expose our legs. They 
always did. This is a sort of thing that 
readily begets a personal feeling against 
nature. There seems no reason why the 
shower should not come five minutes be- 
fore or five minutes after, unless you 
suppose an intention to affront yon. The 



94 -^^ Inlajtd Voyage, 

Cigarette had a mackintosh which put him 
more or less above these contrarieties. 
But I had to bear the brunt uncovered. 
I began to remember that nature was a 
woman. My companion, in a rosier temper, 
listened with great satisfaction to my jere- 
miades, and ironically concurred. He in- 
stanced, as a cognate matter, the action of 
the tides, ** which,'* said he "was altogether 
designed for the confusion of canoeists, ex- 
cept in so far as it was calculated to min- 
ister to a barren vanity on the part of the 
moon." 

. At the last lock, some little way out of 
Landrecies, I refused to go any farther ; and 
sat in a drift of rain by the side of the bank, 
to have a reviving pipe, A vivacious old 
man, whom I took to have been the devil, 
drew near, and questioned me about our jour- 
ney. In the fulness of my heart I laid bare 



On the Sambre Canalized, 95 

our plans before him. He said it was the 
silliest enterprise that ever he heard of. 
Why, did I not know, he asked me, that it 
was nothing but locks, locks, locks, the whole 
way? not to mention that, at this season of 
the year, we whould find the Oise quite dry t 
" Get into a train, my little young man," 
said he, "and go you away home to your 
parents." I was so astounded at the man's 
malice that I could only stare at him in 
silence. A tree would never have spoken to 
me like this. At last I got out with some 
words. We had come from Antwerp already, 
I told him, which was a good long way ; and 
we should 'do the rest in spite of him. Yes, 
I said, if there were no other reason, I would 
do it now, just because he had dared to say 
we could not. The pleasant old gentleman 
looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion to 
my canoe, and marched off, wagging his 
head. 



96 Aft Inland Voyage. 

I was still inwardly fuming when up came 
a pair of young fellows, who imagined I was 
the Cigarette s servant, on a comparison, I 
suppose, of my bare jersey with the other's 
mackintosh, and asked me many questions 
about my place and my master's character. 
I said he was a good enough fellow, but had 
this aburd voyage on the head. " Oh, no, no," 
said one, " you must not say that ; it is not 
absurd ; it is very courageous of him." I 
believe these were a couple of angels sent to 
give me heart again. It was truly fortifying 
to reproduce all the old man's insinuations, 
as if they were original to me in my charac- 
ter of a malcontent footman, and have them 
brushed away like so many flies by these 
admirable young men. 

When I recounted this affair to the Ciga- 
rette, " They must have a curious idea of how 
English servants behave," says he, dryly, 



On the Sambre Canalized, 97 j 

"for you treated me like a brute beast at the 
lock." ; 

I was a good deal mortified ; but my \ 

temper had suffered, it is a fact. 



AT LANDRECIES. 

At Landrecies the rain still fell and the 
wind still blew; but we found a double- 
bedded room with plenty of furniture, real 
water-jugs with real water in them, and din- 
ner, a real dinner, not innocent of real wine. 
After having been a pedlar for one night, 
and a butt for the elements during the whole 
of the next day, these comfortable circum- 
stances fell on my heart like sunshine. 
There was an English fruiterer at dinner, 
travelling with a Belgian fruiterer ; in the 
evening at the cafe we watched our com- 
patriot drop a good deal of money at corks, 
and I don't know why, but this pleased us. 

It turned out that we were to see more 



At Landrecies, 99 

of Landrecies than we expected ; for the 
weather next day was simply bedlamite. It 
is not the place one would have chosen for 
a day's rest, for it consists almost entirely 
of fortifications. Within the ramparts, a 
few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks, 
and a church figure, with what countenance 
they may, as the town. There seems to be 
no trade, and a shop-keeper from whom I 
bought a sixpenny flint and steel was so 
much affected that he filled my pockets 
with spare flints into the bargain. The 
only public buildings that had any interest 
for us were the hotel and the cafi. But we 
visited the church. There lies Marshal 
Clarke. But as neither of us had ever 
heard of that military hero, we bore the 
associations of the spot with fortitude. 

In all garrison towns, guard-calls, and re- 
veilles, and such like, make a fine, romantic 



lOO A7t Inland Voyage, 

..^ 

interlude in civic business. Bugles, and 
drums, and fifes are of themselves most ex- 
cellent things in nature, and when they 
carry the mind to marching armies and the 
picturesque vicissitudes of war they stir up 
something proud in the heart. But in a 
shadow of a town like LandrecieSy with little 
else moving, these points of war made a pro- 
portionate commotion. Indeed, they were 
the only things to remember. It was just 
the place to hear the round going by at 
night in the darkness, with the solid tramp 
of men marching, and the startling rever- 
berations of the drum. It reminded you 
that even this place was a point in the great 
warfaring system of Europe^ and might on 
some futur© day be ringed about with can- 
non smoke and thunder, and make itself a 
name among strong towns. 

The drum, at any rate, from its martial 



At Landrecies, lOi 

voice and notable physiological effect, nay, 
even from its cumbrous and comical shape, 
stands alone among the instruments of noise. 
And if it be true, as I have heard it said, 
that drums are covered with asses* skin, what 
a picturesque irony is there in that ! As if 
this long-suffering animal's hide had not 
been sufficiently belabored during life, now 
by Lyonnese costermongers, now by pre- 
sumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must be 
stripped from his poor hinder quarters after 
death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night 
after night round the streets of every garri- 
son town in Europe. And up the heights of 
Ahiia and Spichereji, and wherever death has 
his red flag a flying, and sounds his own 
potent tuck upon the cannons, there also 
must the drummer boy, hurrying with white 
face over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul 
this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable 
donkeys. 



I02 An Inland Voyage, 

Generally a man is never more uselessly 
employed than when he is at this trick of 
bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what 
effect it has in life, and how your dull ass 
will not mend his pace with beating. But 
in this state of mummy and melancholy 
survival of itself, when the hollow skin re- 
verberates to the drummer's wrist, and each 
dub-a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, and 
puts madness there, and that disposition of 
the pulses which we, in our big way of talk- 
ing, nickname Heroism, — is there not some- 
thing in the nature of a revenge upon the 
donkey's persecutors ? Of old, he might 
say, you drubbed me up hill and down dale 
and I must endure ; but now that I am 
dead those dull thwacks that were scarcely 
audible in country lanes have become 
stirring music in front of the brigade, 
and for every blow that you lay on my old 



At Landrecies, 1 03 

great-coat, you will see a comrade stumble 
and fall. 

Not long after the drums had passed the 
cafl, the Cigarette and the Areihusa began 
to grow sleepy, and set out for the hotel, 
which was only a door or two away. But 
although we had been somewhat indifferent 
to Landrecies, Laitdrecies had not been indif- 
ferent to us. All day, we learned, people 
had been running out between the squalls to 
visit our two boats. Hundreds of persons, 
so said report, although it fitted ill with our 
idea of the town, — hundreds of persons had 
inspected them where they lay in a coal- 
shed. We were becoming lions in Landre- 
cieSy who had been only pedlars the night 
before in Pont. 

And now, when we left the cafi^ we were 
pursued and overtaken at the hotel door by 
no less a person than the yuge de Paix ; a 



104 ^^^ Inland Voyage. 

functionary, as far as I can make out, of the 
character of a Scotch Sheriff Substitute. 
Pie gave us his card and invited us to sup 
with him on the spot, very neatly, very 
gracefully, as Frenchmeit can do these things. 
It was for the credit of Landrecies^ said he ; 
and although we knew very well how little 
credit we could do the place, we must have 
been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation 
so politely introduced. 

The house of the judge was close by ; it 
was a well-appointed bachelor's establish- 
ment, with a curious collection of old brass 
warming-pans upon the walls. Some of 
these were most elaborately carved. It 
seemed a picturesque idea for a collector. 
You could not help thinking how many 
nightcaps had wagged over these warming- 
pans in past generations ; what jests may 
have been made and kisses taken while they 



At Landrecies, 105 

were in service ; and how often they had 
been uselessly paraded in the bed of death. 
If they could only speak, at what absurd, 
indecorous, and tragical scenes had they not 
been present ? 

The wine was excellent. When we made 
the judge our compliments upon a bottle, 
**I do not give it you as my worst," said 
he. I wonder when Englishmen will learn 
these hospitable graces. They are worth 
learning ; they set off life and make ordi- 
nary moments ornamental. 

There were two other Landrecienses pres- 
ent. One was the collector of something or 
other, I forget what ; the other, we were 
told, was the principal notary of the place. 
So it happened that we all five more or less 
followed the law. At this rate, the talk was 
pretty certain to become technical. The 
Cigarette expounded the poor laws very 



io6 An Inland Voyage, 

magisterially. And a little later I found 
myself laying down the Scotch law of 
illegitimacy, of which I am glad to say I 
know nothing. The collector and the no- 
tary, who were both married men, accused 
the judge, who was a bachelor, of having 
started the subject. He deprecated the 
charge, with a conscious, pleased air, just 
like all the men I have ever seen, be they 
French or English. How strange that we 
should all, in our unguarded moments, rather 
like to be thought a bit of a rogue with the 
women ! 

As the evening went on the wine grew 
more to my taste ; the spirits proved better 
than the wine ; the company was genial. 
This was the highest water mark of popular 
favor on the whole cruise. After all, being 
in a judge's house, was there not something 
semi-official in the tribute ? And so, remem- 



At Landrecies, 107 

bering what a great country France is, we 
did full justice to our entertainment. Lan- 
drecies had been a long while asleep before 
we returned to the hotel ; and the sentries 
on the ramparts were already looking for 
daybreak. 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL. 

CANAL BOATS. 

Next day we made a late start in the rain. 
The judge politely escorted us to the end of 
the lock under an umbrella. We had now 
brought ourselves to a pitch of humility, in 
the matter of weather, not often attained 
except in the Scotch Highlands. A rag of 
blue sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our 
hearts singing ; and when the rain was not 
heavy we counted the day almost fair. 

Long lines of barges lay one after another 
along the canal, many of them looking 
mighty spruce and ship-shape in their jer. 
kin of Archangel tar picked out with white 
and green. Some carried gay iron railings 



Sambre and Oise Canal. 109 

and quite a parterre of flower-pots. Children 
played on the decks, as heedless of the rain 
as if they had been brought up on Loch 
Caron side ; men fished over the gunwale, 
some of them under umbrellas ; women did 
their washing ; and every barge boasted its 
mongrel cur by way of watch-dog. Each 
one barked furiously at the canoes, running 
alongside until he had got to the end of his 
own ship, and so passing on the word to the 
dog aboard the next. We must have seen 
something like a hundred of these embarka- 
tions in the course of that day's paddle, 
ranged one after another like the houses in 
a street ; and from not one of them were we 
disappointed of this accompaniment. It was 
like visiting a menagerie, the Cigarette re- 
marked. 

These little cities by the canal side had 
a very odd effect upon the mind. They 



no An Inland Voyage, 

seemed, with their flower-pots and smoking 
chimneys, their washings and dinners, a 
rooted piece of nature in the scene; and 
yet if only the canal below were to open, 
one junk after another would hoist sail or 
harness horses and swim away into all parts 
of France ; and the impromptu hamlet would 
separate, house by house, to the four winds. 
The children who played together to-day by 
the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at his own 
father's threshold, when and where might 
they next meet ? 

For some time past the subject of barges 
had occupied a great deal of our talk, and 
we had projected an old age on the canals 
of Europe. It was to be the most leisurely 
of progresses, now on a swift river at the 
tail of a steamboat, now waiting horses for 
days together on some inconsiderable junc- 
tion. We should be seen pottering on deck 



Sambre and Oise Canal. in 

in all the dignity of years, our white beards 
falling into our laps. We were ever to be 
busied among paint-pots, so that there should 
be no white fresher and no green more em- 
erald than ours, in all the navy of the canals. 
There should be books in the cabin, and 
tobacco jars, and some old Burgundy as red 
as a November sunset and as odorous as a 
violet in April There should be a flageolet 
whence the Cigarette^ with cunning touch, 
should draw melting music under the stars ; 
or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his 
voice — somewhat thinner than of yore, and 
with here and there a quaver, or call it a 
natural grace note — in rich and solemn 
psalmody. 

All this simmering in my mind set me 
wishing to go aboard one of these ideal 
houses of lounging. I had plenty to choose 
from, as I coasted one after another and the 



112 A7t Inland Voyage, 

dogs bayed at me for a vagrant. At last I 
saw a nice old man and his wife looking at 
me with some interest, so I gave them good 
day and pulled up alongside. I began with 
a remark upon their dog, which had some- 
what the look of a pointer ; thence I slid 
into a compliment on Madame's flowers, and 
thence into a word in praise of their way of 
life. 

If you ventured on such an experiment in 
England yo\x would get a slap in the face at 
once. The life would be shown to be a vile 
one, not without a side shot at your better 
fortune. Now, what I like so much in France 
is the clear, unflinching recognition by every- 
body of his own luck. They all know on 
which side their bread is buttered, and take 
a pleasure in showing it to others, which is 
surely the better part of religion. And they 
scorn to make a poor mouth over their pov- 



Sambre and Oise Canal. . 113 

erty, which I take to be the better part of 
manliness. I have heard a woman in quite 
a better position at home, with a good bit 
of money in hand, refer to her own child 
with a horrid whine as "a poor man's child." 
I would not say such a thing to the Duke of 
Westminster. And the French are full of 
this spirit of independence. Perhaps it is 
the result of republican institutions, as they 
call them. Much more likely it is because 
there are so few people really poor that the 
whiners are not enough to keep each other 
in countenance. 

The people on the barge were delighted 
to hear that I admired their state. They 
understood perfectly well, they told me, how 
Monsieur envied them. Without doubt 
Monsieur was rich, and in that case he 
might make a canal-boat as pretty as a villa 
— joli comme un chdteau. And with that 



114 -^^^ Inland Voyage, 

they invited me on board their own water 
villa. They apologized for their cabin ; they 
had not been rich enough to make it as it 
ought to be. 

"The fire should have been here, at this 
side," explained the husband. " Then one 
might have a writing-table in the middle — 
books — and" (comprehensively) "all. It 
would be quite coquettish — qa serait tout- 
d-fait coquet y And he looked about him 
as though the improvements were already 
made. It was plainly not the first time that 
he had thus beautified his cabin in imagina- 
tion ; and when next he makes a hit, I 
should expect to see the writing-table in the 
middle. 

Madame had three birds in a cage. They 
were no great thing, she explained. Fine 
birds were so dear. They had sought to 
get a Hollandais last winter in Rouen 



Sambre and Oise Canal. 1 1 5 

{Roiieny thought I ; and is this whole man- 
sion, with its dogs, and birds, and smoking 
chimneys, so far a traveller as that, and as 
homely an object among the cliffs and or- 
chards of the Seine as on the green plains 
of Sambre f) — they had sought to get a 
Hollandais last winter in Rotcen ; but these 
cost fifteen francs apiece — picture it — fif- 
teen francs ! 

" Pour un tout petit oiseau — For quite a 
little bird," added the husband. 

As I continued to admire, the apologetics 
died away, and the good people began to 
brag of their barge and their happy condi- 
tion in life, as if they had been Emperor and 
Empress of the Indies. It was, in the 
Scotch phrase, a good hearing, and put me 
in good-humor with the world. If people 
knew what an inspiriting thing it is to hear 
a man boasting, so long as he boasts of what 



ii6 Alt Inland Voyage, 

he really has, I believe they would do it 
more freely and with a better grace. 

They began to ask about our voyage. 
You should have seen how they sympa- 
thized. They seemed half ready to give up 
their barge and follow us. But these cana- 
letti are only gypsies semi-domesticated. 
The semi-domestication came out in rather 
a pretty form. Suddenly Madame's brow 
darkened. *' Cependanty' she began, and 
then stopped ; and then began again by 
asking me if I were single. 

" Yes," said I. 

" And your friend who went by just now .?'* 

He also was unmarried. 

Oh, then, all was well. She could not 
have wives left alone at home ; but since 
there were no wives in the question, we were 
doing the best we could. 

" To see about one in the world," said the 



Smnbre and Oise Canal, 117 

husband, " il ny a que qa — there is nothing 
else worth while. A man, look you, who 
sticks in his own village like a bear," he 
went on, ** very well, he sees nothing. And 
then death is the end of all. And he has 
seen nothing." 

Madame reminded her husband of an Eng- 
lishman who had come up this canal in a 
steamer. 

"Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene,'' I sug- 
gested. 

"That's it," assented the husband. "He 
had his wife and family with him, and ser- 
vants. He ci me ashore at all the locks and 
asked the riamt of the villages, whether from 
boatmen or lock-keepers ; and then he wrote, 
wrote them down. Oh, he wrote enormously ! 
I suppose it was a wager." 

A wager was a common enough explana- 
tion for our own exploits, but it seemed an 
original reason for taking notes. 



THE OISE IN FLOOD. 

Before nine next morning the two canoes 
were installed on a light country cart at 
Etreux ; and we were soon following them 
along the side of a pleasant valley full of 
hop-gardens and poplars. Agreeable vil- 
lages lay here and there on the slope of 
the hill : notably, Tupigny, with the hop- 
poles hanging their garlands in the very 
street, and the houses clustered with grapes. 
There was a faint enthusiasm on our pas- 
sage ; weavers put their heads to the win- 
dows ; children cried out in ecstasy at 
sight of the two " boaties " — barquettes; and 
bloused pedestrians, who were acquainted 
with our charioteer, jested with him on the 
nature of his freight. 



The Oise iti Flood. 1 19 

We had a shower or two, but light and 
flying. The air was clean and sweet among 
all these green fields and green things grow- 
ing. There was not a touch of autumn in 
the weather. And when, at Vadcncourt^ we 
launched from a little lawn opposite a mill, 
the sun broke forth and set all the leaves 
shining in the valley of the Oise. 

The river was swollen with the long rains. 

* 

From Vadencourt all the way to Origny it 
ran with ever-quickening speed, taking fresh 
heart at each mile, and racing as though it 
already smelt the sea. The water was yel- 
low and turbulent, swung with an angry 
eddy aniong half-submerged willows, and 
made an angry clatter along stony shores. 
The course kept turning and turning in a 
narrow and well-timbered valley. Now the 
river would approach the side, and run glid- 
ing along the chalky base of the hill, and 



I20 A7t Inland Voyage. 

show us a few open colza fields among the 
trees. Now it would skirt the garden-walls 
of houses, where we might catch a glimpse 
through a doorway, and see a priest pacing 
in the checkered sunlight. Again, the fo- 
liage closed so thickly in front that there 
seemed to be no issue ; only a thicket of 
willows overtopped by elms and poplars, 
under which the river ran flush and fleet, 
and where a kingfisher flew past like a piece 
of the blue sky. On these different manifes- 
tations the sun poured its clear and catholic 
looks. The shadows lay as solid on the 
swift surface of the stream as on the stable 
meadows. The light sparkled golden in the 
dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills 
into communion with our eyes. And all the 
while the river never stopped running or 
took breath ; and the reeds along the whole 
valley stood shivering from top to tqe. 



The Oise m Flood. 121 

There should be some myth (but if there 
is, I know it not) founded on the shivering 
of the reeds. There are not many things in 
nature more striking to man's eye. It is 
such an eloquent pantomime of terror ; and 
to see such a number of terrified creatures 
taking sanctuary in every nook along the 
shore is enough to infect a silly human with 
alarm. Perhaps they are only acold, and no 
wonder, standing waist deep in the stream. 
Or, perhaps, they have never got accustomed 
to the speed and fury of the river's flux, or 
the miracle of its continuous body. Pan 
once played upon their forefathers ; and so, 
by the hands of his river, he still plays upon 
these later generations down all the val- 
ley of the Oisc ; and plays the same air, both 
sweet and shrill, to tell us of the beauty and 
the terror of the world. 

The canoe was like a leaf in the current. 



122 An Inland Voyage. 

It took it up and shook it, and carried it 
masterfully away, like a Centaur carrying off 
a nymph To keep some command on our 
direction required hard and diligent plying 
of the paddle. The river was in such a 
hurry for the sea ! Every drop of water ran 
in a panic, like so many people in a fright- 
ened crowd. But what crowd was ever so 
numerous or so single-minded .-* All the 
objects of sight went by at a dance measure ; 
the eyesight raced with the racing river; 
the exigencies of every moment kept the 
pegs screwed so tight that our being quiv- 
ered like a well-tuned instrument, and the 
blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted 
through all the highways and byways of 
the veins and arteries, and in and out of the 
heart, as if circulation were but a holiday 
journey and not the daily moil of threescore 
years and ten. The reeds might nod their 



TJie Oise in Flood. 123 

heads in warning, and with tremulous ges- 
tures tell how the river was as cruel as it 
was strong and cold, and how death lurked 
in the eddy underneath the willows. But 
the reeds had to stand where they were ; 
and those who stand still are always timid 
advisers. As for us, we could have shouted 
aloud. If this lively and beautiful river 
were, indeed, a thing of death's contrivance, 
the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted 
himself with us. I was living three to the 
minute. I was scoring points against him 
every stroke of my paddle, every turn of 
the stream. I have rarely had better profit 
of my life. 

For I think we may look upon our little 
private war with death somewhat in this 
light. If a man knows he will sooner or 
later be robbed upon a journey, he will have 
a bottle of the best in every inn, and look 



124 ^^^ Inland Voyage. 

upon all his extravagances as so much gained 
upon the thieves. And above all, where, in- 
stead of simply spending, he makes a profit- 
able investment for some of his money, 
when it will be out of risk of loss. So every 
bit of brisk living, and above all when it is 
healthful, is just so much gained upon the 
wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the 
less in our pockets, the more in our stom- 
achs, when he cries. Stand and deliver. A 
swift stream is a favorite artifice of his, 
and one that brings him in a comfortable 
thing per annum ; but when he and I come 
to settle our accounts I shall whistle in his 
face for these hours upon the upper Oise. 

Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken 
with the sunshine and the exhilaration of 
the pace. We could no longer contain our- 
selves and our content. The canoes were 
too small for us ; we must be out and stretch 



The Oise in Flood. 125 

ourselves on shore. And so in a green 
meadow we bestowed our limbs on the grass, 
and smoked deifying tobacco, and proclaimed 
the world excellent. It was the last good 
hour of the day, and I dwell upon it with 
extreme complacency. 

On one side of the valley, high upon the 
chalky summit of the hill, a ploughman with 
his team appeared and disappeared at regular 
intervals. At each revelation he stood still 
for a few seconds against the sky, for all the 
world (as the Cigarette declared) like a toy 
Bums who had just ploughed up the Moun- 
tain Daisy. He was the only living thing 
within view, unless we are to count the river. 

On the other side of the valley a group of 
red roofs and a belfry showed among the 
foliage. Thence some inspired bell-ringer 
made the afternoon musical on a chime of 
bells. There was something very sweet and 



126 An Inland Voyage. 

taking m the air he played, and we thought 
we had never heard bells speak so intelligi- 
bly or sing so melodiously as these. It 
must have been to some such measure that 
the spinners and the young maids sang, 
" Come away. Death," in the Shakespearian 
Illyria. There is so often a threatening 
note, something blatant and metallic, in the 
voice of bells, that I believe we have fully 
more pain than pleasure from hearing them ; 
but these, as they sounded abroad, now high, 
now low, now with a plaintive cadence that 
caught the ear like the burden of a popular 
song, were always moderate and tunable, 
and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still, 
rustic places, like the noise of a waterfall or 
the babble of a rookery in spring. I could 
have asked the bell-ringer for his blessing, 
good, sedate old man, who swung the rope 
so gently to the time of his meditations. I 



The Oise m Flood, 127 

could have blessed the priest or the heritors, 
or whoever may be concerned with such 
affairs in France^ who had left these sweet 
old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not 
held meetings, and made collections, and 
had their names repeatedly printed in the 
local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, 
brazen, Birming/iam-hQ^rtQd. substitutes, who 
should bombard their sides to the provoca- 
tion of a brand-new bell-ringer, and fill the 
echoes of the valley with terror and riot. 

At last the bells ceased, and with their 
note the sun withdrew. The piece was at 
an end ; shadow and silence possessed the 
valley of the Oise. We took to the paddle 
with glad hearts, like people who have sat 
out a noble performance and return to work. 
The river was more dangerous here ; it ran 
swifter, the eddies were more sudden and 
violent. All the way down we had had our 



128 Aft Inland Voyage. 

fill of difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir 
which could be shot, sometimes one so shal- 
low and full of stakes that we must withdraw 
the boats from the water and carry them 
round. But the chief sort of obstacle was a 
consequence of the late high winds. Every 
two or three hundred yards a tree had fallen 
across the river, and usually involved more 
than another in its fall. Often there was 
free water at the end, and we could steer 
round the leafy promontory and hear the 
water sucking and bubbling among the 
twigs. Often, again, when the tree reached 
from bank to bank, there was room, by lying 
close, to shoot through underneath, canoe 
and all. Sometimes it was necessary to get 
out upon the trunk itself and pull the boats 
across ; and sometimes, where the stream 
was too impetuous for this, there was noth- 
ing for it but to land and ''carry over." 



The Oise in Flood. 1 29 

This made a fine series of accidents in the 
day's career, and kept us aware of ourselves. 
Shortly after our re-embarkation, while I 
was leading by a long way, and still full of 
a noble, exulting spirit in honor of the sun, 
the swift pace, and the church bells, the 
river made one of its leonine pounces round 
a corner, and I was aware of another fallen 
tree within a stone-cast. I had my back- 
board down in a trice, and aimed for a place 
where the trunk seemed high enough above 
the water, and the branches not too thick to 
let me slip below. When a man has just 
vowed eternal brotherhood with the universe 
he is not in a temper to take great determi- 
nations coolly, and this, which might have 
been a very important determination for me, 
had not been taken under a happy star. 
The tree caught me about the chest, and 
while I was yet struggling to make less of 



130 Aft Inlaftd Voyage. 

myself and get through, the river took the 
matter out of my hands and bereaved me of 
my boat. The AretJmsa swung round broad- 
side on, leaned over, ejected so much of me 
as still remained on board, and, thus disen- 
cumbered, whipped under the tree, righted, 
and went merrily away down stream. 

I do not know how long it was before I 
scrambled on to the tree to which I was left 
clinging, but it was longer than I cared 
about. My thoughts were of a grave and 
almost; -sombre character, but I still clung to 
my paddle. The stream ran away with my 
heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, 
and I seemed, by the weight, to have all the 
water of the Oise in my trousers pockets. 
You can never know, till you try it, what a 
dead pull a river makes against a man. 
Death himself had me by the heels, for this 
was his last ambuscade, and he must now 



The Oise in Flood, 1 3 1 

join personally in the fray. And still I held 
to my paddle. At last I dragged myself on 
to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there a 
breathless sop, with a mingled sense of 
humor and injustice. A poor figure I must 
have presented to Burns upon the hill-top 
with his team. But there was the paddle in 
my hand. On my tomb, if ever I have one, 
I mean to get these words inscribed : " He 
clung to his paddle." 

The Cigarette had gone past awhile be- 
fore; for, as I might have observed, if I 
had been a little less pleased with the uni- 
verse at the moment, there was a clear way 
round the tree-top at the farther side. He 
had offered his services to haul me out, but, 
as I was then already on my elbows, I had 
declined, and sent him down stream after the 
truant Arethusa. The stream was too rapid 
for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone 



132 A7Z Inland Voyage. 

two, upon his hands. So I crawled along 
the trunk to shore, and proceeded down the 
meadows by the river-side. I was so cold 
that my heart was sore. I had now an idea 
of my own why the reeds so bitterly shiv- 
ered. I could have given any of them a 
lesson. The Cigarette remarked, facetiously, 
that he thought I was "taking exercise" as 
I drew near, until he made out for certain 
that I was only twittering with cold. I had 
a rub-down with a towel, and donned a dry 
suit from the india-rubber bag. But I was 
not my own man again for the rest of the 
voyage. I had a queasy sense that I wore 
my last dry clothes upon my body. The 
struggle had tired me ; and, perhaps, whether 
I knew it or not, I was a little dashed in 
spirit. The devouring element in the uni- 
verse had leaped out against me, in this 
green valley quickened by a running stream. 



The Oise in Flood. 133 

The bells were all very pretty in their way, 
but I had heard some of the hollow notes of 
Pans music. Would the wicked river drag 
me down by the heels, indeed ? and look so 
beautiful all the time ? Nature's good-humor 
was only skin deep, after all. 

There was still a long way to go by the 
winding course of the stream, and darkness 
had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in 
Origny Sainte-Benoite when we arrived. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE. 

A BY-DAY. 

The next day was Sunday^ and the church 
bells had little rest ; indeed, I do not think 
I remember anywhere else so great a choice 
of services as were here offered to the de- 
vout. And while the bells made merry in 
the sunshine, all the world with his dog 
was out shooting among the beets and colza. 

In the morning a hawker and his wife 
went down the street at a foot-pace, singing 
to a very slow, lamentable music, " France^ 
mes amours y It brought everybody to the 
door; and when our landlady called in the 
man to buy the words, he had not a copy of 
them left. She was not the first nor the 



OrigJiy Sainte-Benotte. 135 

second who had been taken with the song. 
There is something very pathetic in the love 
of the French people, since the war, for 
dismal patriotic music-making. I have 
watched a forester from Alsace while some 
one was singing " Les malheurs de la France!' 
at a baptismal party in the neighborhood of 
Fontainebleau. He arose from the table and 
took his son aside, close by where I was 
standing. *' Listen, listen," he said, bear- 
ing on the boy's shoulder, '* and remember 
this, my son." A little after he went out 
into the garden suddenly, and I could hear 
him sobbing in the darkness. 

The humiliation of their arms and the loss 
of Alsace and Lorraine made a sore pull 
on the endurance of this sensitive people ; 
and their hearts are still hot, not ,so much 
against Germany as against the Empire. In 
what other country will you find a patriotic 



136 An Inlajid Voyage. 

ditty bring all the world into the street ? 
But aflfliction heightens love ; and we shall 
never know we are Englishmen until we have 
lost India. Independent America is still the 
cross of my existence ; I cannot think of 
Farmer George without abhorrence ; and I 
never feel more warmly to my own land than 
when I see the stars and stripes, and remem- 
ber what our empire might have been. 

The hawker's little book, which I pur- 
chased, was a curious mixture. Side by 
side with the flippant, rowdy nonsense of the 
Paris music-halls there were many pastoral 
pieces, not without a touch of poetry, I 
thought, and instinct with the brave indepen- 
dence of the poorer class in France. There 
you might read how the wood-cutter gloried 
in his axe, and the gardener scorned to be 
ashamed of his spade. It was not very well 
written, this poetry of labor, but the pluck 



Origny Sainte-Benoite. 137 

of the sentiment redeemed what was weak 
or wordy in the expression. The martial 
and the patriotic pieces, on the other hand, 
were tearful, womanish productions one and 
all. The poet had passed under the Caudine 
Forks ; he sang for an army visiting the 
tomb of its old renown, with arms reversed ; 
and sang not of victory, but of death. There 
was a number in the hawker's collection 
called Consents Franqais^ which may rank 
among the most dissuasive war-lyrics on 
record. It would not be possible to fight at 
all in such a spirit. The bravest conscript 
would turn pale if such a ditty were struck 
up beside him on the morning of battle ; and 
whole regiments would pile their arms to its 
tune. 

If Fletcher of Saltoun is in the right about 
the influence of national songs, you would 
say Franee was come to a poor pass. But 



138 An Inland Voyage. 

the thing will work its own cure, and a 
sound-hearted and courageous people weary 
at length of snivelling over their disasters. 
Already Paul .De'roulede has written some 
manly military verses. There is not much 
of the trumpet note in them, perhaps, to stir 
a man's heart in his bosom ; they lack the 
lyrical elation, and move slowly; but they 
are written in a grave, honorable, stoical 
spirit, which should carry soldiers far in a 
good cause. One feels as if one would like 
to trust Defoulede with something. It will 
be happy if he can so far inoculate his fellow- 
countrymen that they may be trusted with 
their own future. And, in the mean time, 
here is an antidote to " French Conscripts " 
and much other doleful versification. 

We had left the boats over night in the 
custody of one whom we shall call Carnival 
I did not properly catch his name, and per- 



Origny Saint e-Benoite, 139 

haps that was not unfortunate for him, as I 
am not in a position to hand him down with 
honor to posterity. To this person's prem- 
ises we strolled in the course of the day, and 
found quite a little deputation inspecting the 
canoes. There was a stout gentleman with 
a knowledge of the river, which he seemed 
eager to impart. There was a very elegant 
young gentleman in a black coat, with a 
smattering of English, who led the talk at 
once to the Oxford and Cambridge boat 
race. And then there were three hand- 
some girls from fifteen to twenty ; and an 
old gentleman in a blouse, with no teeth to 
speak of, and a strong country accent. 
Quite the pick of Origny^ I should suppose. 

The Cigarette had some mysteries to per- 
form with his rigging in the coach-house ; so 
I was left to do the parade single-handed. 
I found myself very much of a hero whether 



140 Afi Inland Voyage, 

I would or not. The girls were full of little 
shudderings over the dangers of our journey. 
And I thought it would be ungallant not to 
take my cue from the ladies. My mishap of 
yesterday, told in an off-hand way, produced 
a deep sensation. It was Othello over again, 
with no less than three Desdemonas and a 
sprinkling of sympathetic senators in the 
background. Never were the canoes more 
flattered, or flattered more adroitly. 

*' It is like a violin," cried one of the girls 
in an ecstasy. 

" I thank you for the word, mademoiselle," 
said I. '' All the more since there are peo- 
ple who call out to me that it is like a 
coffin." 

** Oh ! but it is really like a violin. It is 
finished like a violin," she went on. 

"And polished like a violin," added a 
senator. 



Origny Sainte-Benoite. 141 

" One has only to stretch the cords," con- 
cluded another, " and then tum-tumty-tum " ; 
he imitated the result with spirit. 

Was not this a graceful little ovation ? 
Where this people finds the secret of its 
pretty speeches I cannot imagine, unless 
the secret should be no other than a sincere 
desire to please. But then no disgrace is 
attached in France to saying a thing neatly ; 
whereas in England, to talk like a book is to 
give in one's resignation to society. 

The old gentleman in the blouse stole 
into the coach-house, and somewhat irrele- 
vantly informed the Cigarette that he was 
the father of the three girls and four more ; 
quite an exploit for a Frenchman. 

*• You are very fortunate," answered the 
Cigarette politely. 

And the old gentleman, having apparently 
gained his point, stole away again. 



142 Alt Inlafid Voyage. 

We all got very friendly together. The 
girls proposed to start with us on the mor- 
row, if you please. And, jesting apart, every 
one was anxious to know the hour of our 
departure. Now, when you are going to 
crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a 
crowd, however friendly, is undesirable, and 
so we told them not before twelve, and 
mentally determined to be off by ten at 
latest. 

Towards evening we went abroad again to 
post some letters. It was cool and pleasant ; 
the long village was quite empty, except for 
one or two urchins who followed us as they 
might have followed a menagerie ; the hills 
and the tree-tops looked in from all sides 
through the clear air, and the bells were 
chiming for yet another service. 

Suddenly we sighted the three girls, stand- 
ing, with a fourth sister, in front of a shop 



Origny Sainte-Benotte. 143 

on the wide selvage of the roadway. We 
had been very merry with them a little 
while ago, to be sure. But what was the 
etiquette of Origny ? Had it been a country 
road, of course we should have spoken to 
them ; but here, under the eyes of all the 
gossips, ought we to do even as much as 
bow .? I consulted the Cigarette. 

" Look," said he. 

I looked. There were the four girls on 
the same spot; but now four backs were 
turned to us, very upright and conscious. 
Corporal Modesty had given the word of 
command, and the well-disciplined picket 
had gone right-about-face like a single per- 
son. They maintained this formation all the 
while we were in sight ; but we heard them 
tittering among themselves, and the girl 
whom we had not met laughed with open 
mouth, and even looked over her shoulder at 



144 -^^^ Inland Voyage. 

the enemy. I wonder was it altogether 
modesty after all, or in part a sort of country 
provocation ? 

As we were returning to the inn we 
beheld something floating in the ample field 
of golden evening sky, above the chalk cliffs 
and the trees that grow along their summit. 
It was too high up, too large, and too steady 
for a kite ; and, as it was dark, it could not 
be a star. For, although a star were as 
black as ink and as rugged as a walnut, so 
amply does the sun bathe heaven with radi- 
ance that it would sparkle like a point of 
light for us. The village was dotted with 
people with their heads in air ; and the chil- 
dren were in a bustle all along the street 
and far up the straight road that climbs the 
hill, where we could still see them running 
in loose knots. It was a balloon, we learned, 
which had left Saint Quentin at half past five 



Origny Samte-Benolte. 145 

that evening. Mighty composedly the ma- 
jority of the grown people took it. But we 
were English, and were soon running up the 
hill with the best. Being travellers our- 
selves in a small way, we would fain have 
seen these other travellers alight. 

The spectacle was over by the time we 
gained the top of the hill. All the gold had 
withered out of the sky, and the balloon had 
disappeared. Whither } I ask myself ; caught 
up into the seventh heaven } or come safely 
to land somewhere in that blue, uneven dis- 
tance, into which the roadway dipped and 
melted before our eyes } . Probably the aero- 
nauts were already warming themselves at a 
farm chimney, for they say it is cold in these 
unhomely regions of the air. The night fell 
swiftly. Roadside trees and disappointed 
sightseers, returning through the meadows, 
stood out in black against a margin of low, 
10 



146 An Inla7id Voyage. 

red sunset. It was cheerfuller to face the 
other way, and so down the hill we went, 
with a full moon, the color of a melon, swing- 
ing high above the wooded valley, and the 
white cliffs behind us faintly reddened by 
the fire of the chalk-kilns. 

The lamps were lighted, and the salads 
were being made in Origny Sainte-Benoite by 
the river. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE. 

THE COMPANY AT TABLE. 

Although we came late for dinner, the 
company at table treated us to sparkling 
wine. "That is how we are in France^' said 
one. " Those who sit down with us are our 
friends." And the rest applauded. 

They were three altogether, and an odd 
trio to pass the Sunday with. 

Two of them were guests like ourselves, 
both men of the north. One ruddy, and of a 
full habit of body, with copious black hair 
and beard, the intrepid hunter of France^ 
who thought nothing so small, not even a 
lark or a minnow, but he might vindicate his 
prowess by its capture. For such a great, 



148 All Inland Voyage, 

healthy man, his hair flourishing Hke Sam- 
sons, his arteries running buckets of red 
blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, 
produced a feeling of disproportion in the 
world, as when a steam-hammer is set to 
cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, sub- 
dued person, blond, and lymphatic, and sad, 
with something the look of a Dane : " Tristes 
tetes de Danois / " as Gaston Lafenestre used 
to say. 

I must not let that name go by without a 
word for the best of all good fellows, now 
gone down into the dust. We shall never 
again see Gaston in his forest costume, — he 
was Gaston with all the world, in affec- 
tion, not in disrespect, — nor hear him wake 
the echoes of Fontainebleaic with the woodland 
horn. Never again shall his kind smile put 
peace among all races of artistic men, and 
make the Englishman at home in France. 



Origny Sainte-Be7toUe, 149 

Never more shall the sheep, who were not 
more innocent at heart than he, sit all un- 
consciously for his industrious pencil. He 
died too early, at the very moment when he 
was beginning to put forth fresh sprouts and 
blossom into something worthy of himself ; 
and yet none who knew him will think he 
lived in vain. I never knew a man so little, 
for whom yet I had so much affection ; and 
I find it a good test of others, how much 
they had learned to understand and value 
him. His was, indeed, a good influence in 
life while he was still among us ; he had a 
fresh laugh ; it did you good to see him ; and, 
however sad he may have been at heart, he 
always bore a bold and cheerful countenance 
and took fortune's worst as it were the 
showers of spring. But now his mother sits 
alone by the side of Fontaiitebleau woods, 
where he gathered mushrooms in his hardy 
and penurious youth. 



150 Ajt Inland Voyage, 

Many of his pictures found their way 
across the channel ; besides those which 
were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left 
him alone in London with two English 
pence, and, perhaps, twice as many words of 
English. If any one who reads these lines 
should have a scene of sheep, in the manner 
of yacques, with this fine creature's signature, 
let him tell himself that one of the kindest 
and bravest of men has lent a hand to deco- 
rate his lodging. There may be better pic 
tures in the National Gallery; but not a 
painter among the generations had a better 
heart. Precious in the sight of the Lord of 
humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the death of 
his saints. It had need to be precious ; for 
it is very costly, when, by a stroke, a mother 
is left desolate, and the peace-maker and 
peace-looker of a whole society is laid in the 
ground with CcBsar and the Twelve Apostles, 



Origny Saint e-Benotte. 151 

There is something lacking among the 
oaks of Fontaine b lean ; and when the dessert 
comes in at Barbizon, people look to the 
door for a figure that is gone. 

The third of our companions at Origny was 
no less a person than the landlady's husband ; 
not properly the landlord, since he worked 
himself in a factory during the day, and 
came to his own house at evening as a guest; 
a man worn to skin and bone by perpetual 
excitement, with baldish head, sharp features, 
and swift, shining eyes. On Saturday, de- 
scribing some paltry adventure at a duck- 
hunt, he broke a plate into a score of frag- 
ments. Whenever he made a remark he 
would look all round the table with his chin 
raised and a spark of green light in either 
eye, seeking approval. His wife appeared 
now and again in the doorway of the room, 
where she was superintending dinner, with a 



152 An Inland Voyage, 

*^ He?tri, yow forget yourself," or a '^ Henri, 
you cart surely talk without making such a 
noise." Indeed, that was what the honest 
fellow could not do. On the most trifling 
matter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the 
table, and his voice rolled abroad in changeful 
thunder. I never saw such a petard of a man ; 
I think the devil was in him. He had two 
favorite expressions, " It is logical," or illogi- 
cal, as the case might be ; and this other 
thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man 
might unfurl a banner, at the beginning of 
many a long and sonorous story : " I am a 
proletarian, you see." Indeed, we saw it very 
well." God forbid that ever I should find 
him handling a gun in Paris streets. That 
will not be a good moment for the general 
public. 

I thought his two phrases very much rep- 
resented the good and evil of his class, and, 



Origny Saint c-Bciioite. 153 

to some extent, of his country. It is a 
strong thing to say what one is, and not be 
ashamed of it ; even although it be in doubt- 
ful taste to repeat the statement too often in 
one evening. I should not admire it in a 
duke, of course ; but as times go the trait is 
honorable in a workman. On the other 
hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put 
one's reliance upon logic ; and our own logic 
particularly, for it is generally wrong. We 
never know where we are to end if once we 
begin following words or doctors. There is 
an upright stock in a man's own heart that 
is trustier than any syllogism ; and the 
eyes, and the sympathies, and appetites 
know a thing or two that have never yet 
been stated in controversy. Reasons are as 
plentiful as blackberries ; and, like fisticuffs, 
they serve impartially with all sides. Doc- 
trines do not stand or fall by their proofs, 



154 ^^^ Inland Voyage. 

and are only logical in so far as they are 
cleverly put. An able controversialist no 
more than an able general demonstrates the 
justice of his cause. But France is all gone 
wandering after one or two big words ; it 
will take some time before they can be satis- 
fied that they are no more than words, how- 
ever big ; and, when once that is done, they 
will perhaps find logic less diverting. 

The conversation opened with details of 
the day's shooting. When all the sportsmen 
of a village shoot over the village territory 
pro indiviso, it is plain that many questions 
6f etiquette and priority must arise. 

" Here now," cried the landlord, brandish- 
ing a plate, 'Miere is a field of beet-root. 
Well. Here am I, then. I advance, do I 
not } Eh bien ! sacristV ; and the statement, 
waxing louder, rolls off into a reverberation 
of oaths, the speaker glaring about for sym- 



Origny Sainte-Bejiotte. 155 

pathy, and everybody nodding his head to 
him in the name of peace. 

The ruddy Northman told some tales of his 
own prowess in keeping order : notably one 
of a Marquis. 

" Marquis," I said, " if you take another 
step I fire upon you. You have committed 
a dirtiness, Marquis." 

Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis 
touched his cap and withdrew. 

The landlord applauded noisily. '* It was 
well done," he said. ** He did all that he 
could. He admitted he was wrong." And 
then oath upon oath. He was no marquis- 
lover, either, but he had a sense of justice in 
him, this proletarian host of ours. 

From the matter of hunting, the talk 
veered into a general comparison of Paris 
and the country. The proletarian beat the 
table like a drum in praise of Paris. " What 



156 Au Inland Voyage. 

is Paris f Paris is the cream of France. 
There are no Parisians ; it is you, and I, and 
everybody who are Parisians. A man has 
eighty chances per cent to get on in the 
world in Parish And he drew a vivid 
sketch of the workman in a den no bigger 
than a dog-hutch, making articles that were 
to go all over the world. ** Eh bien, qnoi, 
cest magnijique, ga! " cried he. 

The sad Northman interfered in praise of 
a peasant's life ; he thought Paris bad for 
men and women. ''Centralization," said he — 

But the landlord was at his throat in a 
moment. It was all logical, he showed him, 
and all magnificent. "What a spectacle! 
What a glance for an eye ! " And the dishes 
reeled upon the table under a cannonade of 
blows. 

Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word 
in praise of the liberty of opinion in France. 



Origny Sainte-Benoite. 157 

I could hardly have shot more amiss. There 
was an instant silence and a great wagging 
of significant heads. They did not fancy 
the subject, it was plain, but they gave me 
to understand that the sad Northman was a 
martyr on account of his views. "Ask him 
a bit," said they. ''Just ask him." 

"Yes, sir," said he in his quiet way, an. 
swering me, although I had not spoken, " I 
am afraid there is less liberty of opinion in 
France than you may imagine." And with 
that he dropped his eyes and seemed to 
consider the subject at an end. 

Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. 
How, or why, or when was this lymphatic 
bagman martyred .-* We concluded at once 
it was on some religious question, and 
brushed up our memories of the Inquisitiony 
which were principally drawn from Poes 
horrid story, and the sermon in Tristram 
Sliandy, I believe. 



158 An Inlajid Voyage. 

On the morrow we had an opportunity of 
going further into the question ; for when 
we rose very early to avoid a sympathizing 
deputation at our departure, we found the 
hero up before us. He was breaking his 
fast on white wine and raw onions, in order 
to keep up the character of martyr, I con- 
clude. We had a long conversation, and 
made out what we wanted in spite of his 
reserve. But here was a truly curious cir- 
cumstance. It seems possible for two 
Scotchmen and a Frenchman to discuss dur- 
ing a long half-hour, and each nationality 
have a different idea in view throughout. 
It was not till the very end that we dis- 
covered his heresy had been political, or 
that he suspected our mistake. The terms 
and spirit in which he spoke of his political 
beliefs were, in our eyes, suited to religious 
beliefs. And vice versd. 



Origny Sahite-Benotte. 159 

Nothing could be more characteristic of 
the two countries. Politics are the religion 
of France ; as Naiity Ewart would have said, 
"A d — d bad religion," while we, at home, 
keep most of our bitterness for all differ- 
ences about a hymn-book or a Hebrew word 
which, perhaps, neither of the parties can 
translate. And perhaps the misconception 
is typical of many others that may never be 
cleared up ; not only between people of dif- 
ferent race, but between those of different sex. 

As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a 
Communist, or perhaps only a Communard, 
which is a very different thing, and had lost 
one or more situations in consequence. I 
think he had also been rejected in marriage ; 
but perhaps he had a sentimental way of 
considering business which deceived me. 
He was a mild, gentle creature, any way, 
and I hope he has got a better situation and 
married a more suitable wife since then. 



DOWN THE OISE. 

TO MOY. 

Carnival notoriously cheated us at first. 
Finding us easy in our ways, he regretted 
having let us off so cheaply, and, taking me 
aside, told me a cock-and-bull story, with the 
moral of another five francs for the narrator. 
The thing was palpably absurd ; but I paid 
up, and at once dropped all friendliness of 
manner and kept him in his place as an in- 
ferior, with freezing British dignity. He 
saw in a moment that he had gone too far 
and killed a willing horse ; his face fell ; I 
am sure he would have refunded if he could 
only have thought of a decent pretext. He 
wished me to drink with him, but I would 



Down the Oise. i6i 

none of his drinks. He grew pathetically- 
tender in his professions, but I walked be- 
side him in silence or answered him in 
stately courtesies, and, when we got to the 
landing-place, passed the word in English 
slang to the Cigarette, 

In spite of the false scent we had thrown 
out the day before, there must have been 
fifty people about the bridge. We were as 
pleasant as we could be with all but Carni- 
val, We said good by, shaking hands with 
the old gentleman who knew the river and 
the young gentleman who had a smattering 
of English, but never a word for Carnival, 
Poor Carnival, here was a humiliation. He 
who had been so much identified with the 
canoes, who had given orders in our name, 
who had shown off the boats and even the 
boatmen like a private exhibition of his own, 
to be now so publicly shamed by the lions 
II 



1 62 An Inland Voyage, 

of his caravan ! I never saw anybody look 
more crestfallen than he. He hung in the 
background, coming timidly forward ever 
and again as he thought he saw some symp- 
tom of a relenting humor, and falling hur- 
riedly back when he encountered a cold 
stare. Let us hope it will be a lesson to 
him. 

I would not have mentioned CarnivaVs 
peccadillo had not the thing been so uncom- 
mon in France. This, for instance, was the 
only case of dishonesty or even sharp prac- 
tice in our whole voyage. We talk very 
much about our honesty in England. It is 
a good rule to be on your guard wherever 
you hear great professions about a very little 
piece of virtue. If the English could only 
hear how they are spoken of abroad, they 
might confine themselves for a while to 
remedying the fact, and perhaps even when 
that was done, give us fewer of their airs. 



Down the Oise. 163 

The young ladies, the graces of Orignyy 
were not present at our start, but when we 
got round to the second bridge, behold, it 
was black with sight-seers ! We were loudly 
cheered, and for a good way below young 
lads and lasses ran along the bank, still 
cheering. What with current and paddling, 
we were flashing along like swallows. It 
was no joke to keep up with us upon the 
woody shore. But the girls picked up their 
skirts, as if they were sure they had good 
ankles, and followed until their breath was 
out. The last to weary were the three 
graces and a couple of companions ; and 
just as they, too, had had enough, the fore- 
most of the three leaped upon a tree-stump 
and kissed her hand to the canoeists. Not 
Diana herself, although this was more of 
a VenuSf after all, could have done a graceful 
thing more gracefully. " Come back again ! '* 



164 An Inland Voyage. 

she cried ; and all the others echoed her ; 
and the hills about Origny repeated the 
words, "Come back." But the river had us 
round an angle in a twinkling, and we were 
alone with the green trees and running 
water. 

Come back } There is no coming back, 
young ladies, on the impetuous stream of 
life. 

The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, 
The ploughman from the sun his season takes. 

And we must all set our pocket watches by 
the clock of fate. There is a headlong, 
forthright tide, that bears away man with 
his fancies like straw, and runs fast in time 
and space. It is full of curves like this, 
your winding river of the Oise ; and lingers 
and returns in pleasant pastorals ; and yet, 
rightly thought upon, never returns at all. 
For though it should revisit the same acre of 



Down the Oise, 165 

meadow in the same hour, it will have made 
an ample sweep between whiles ; many little 
streams will have fallen in ; many exhala- 
tions risen towards the sun ; and even al- 
though it were the same acre, it will not 
be the same river Oise. And thus, O graces 
of Origny^ athough the wandering fortune 
of my life should carry me back again to 
where you await death's whistle by the river, 
that will not be the old I who walks the 
street ; and those wives and mothers, say, 
will those be you ? 

There was never any mistake about the 
Oise, as a matter of fact. In these upper 
reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry for 
the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, through 
all the windings of its channel, that I strained 
my thumb fighting with the rapids, and had 
to paddle all the rest of the way with one 
hand turned up. Sometimes it had to serve 



1 66 Alt Inland Voyage. 

mills ; and being still a little river, ran very- 
dry and shallow in the mean while. We had 
to put our legs out of the boat, and shove 
ourselves off the sand of the bottom with 
our feet. And still it went on its way sing- 
ing among the poplars, and making a green 
valley in the world. After a good woman, 
and a good book, and tobacco, there is noth- 
ing so agreeable on earth as a river. I for- 
gave it its attempt on my life ; which was, 
after all, one part owing to the unruly winds 
of heaven that had blown down the tree, one 
part to my own mismanagement, and only a 
third part to the river itself, and that not 
out of malice, but from its great preoccupa- 
tion over its own business of getting to the 
sea. A difficult business, too ; for the de- 
tours it had to make are not to be counted. 
The geographers seem to have given up the 
attempt ; for I found no map represent the 



Down the Oise, 167 

infinite contortion of its course. A fact will 
say more than any of them. After we had 
been some hours, three, if I mistake not, 
flitting by the trees at this smooth, break- 
neck gallop, when we came upon a hamlet 
and asked where we were, we had got no 
further than four kilometres (say two miles 
and a half) from Origny. If it were not for 
the honor of the thing (in the Scotch say- 
ing), we might almost as well have been 
standing still. 

We lunched on a meadow inside a parallel- 
ogram of poplars. The leaves danced and 
prattled in the wind all round about us. The 
river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to 
chide at our delay. Little we cared. The 
river knew where it was going ; not so we ; 
the less our hurry, where we found good quar- 
ters, and a pleasant theatre for a pipe. At 
that hour stock-brokers were shouting in 



1 68 Alt Inland Voyage, 

Paris Bourse for two or three per cent ; but we 
minded them as little as the sliding stream, 
and sacrificed a hecatomb lof minutes to the 
gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry is 
the resource of the faithless. Where a man 
can trust his own heart, and those of his 
friends, to morrow is as good as to-day. And 
if he die in the mean while, why, then, there 
he dies, and the question is solved. 

We had to take to the canal in the course of 
the afternoon ; because where it crossed the 
river there was, not a bridge, but a siphon. 
If it had not been for an excited fellow on 
the bank we should have paddled right into 
the siphon, and thenceforward not paddled 
any more. We met a man, a gentleman, on 
the tow-path, who was much interested in 
our cruise. And I was witness to a strange 
seizure of lying suffered by the Cigarette; who, 
because his knife came from Norway, nar- 



Down the Oise. 169 

rated all sorts of adventures in that country, 
where he has never been. He was quite 
feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal 
possession. 

Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant little 
village, gathered round a chciteau in a moat. 
The air was perfumed with hemp from 
neighboring fields. At the Golden Sheep 
we found excellent entertainment. German 
shells from the siege of La Fere^ Niimberg 
figures, gold-fish in a bowl, and all manner of 
knick-knacks, embellished the public room. 
The landlady was a stout, plain, short- 
sighted, motherly body, with something not 
far short of a genius for cookery. She had a 
guess of her excellence herself. After every 
dish was sent in, she would come and look 
on at the dinner for a while, with puckered, 
blinking eyes. " Cest bon, nest-ce pas?" she 
would say ; and, when she had received a 



I/O An Inland Voyage, 

proper answer, she disappeared into the 
kitchen. That common French dish, par- 
tridge and cabbages, became a new thing in 
my eyes at the Golde7i Sheep ; and many sub- 
sequent dinners have bitterly disappointed 
me in consequence. Sweet was our rest in 
the Golde7t Sheep at Moy, 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY. 

We lingered in Moy a good part of the 
day, for we were fond of being philosophical, 
and scorned long journeys and early starts 
on principle. The place, moreover, invited 
to repose. People in elaborate shooting cos- 
tumes sallied from the chateau with guns and 
game-bags ; and this was a pleasure in itself, 
to remain behind while these elegant pleas- 
ure-seekers took the first of the morning. 
In this way all the world may be an aristo- 
crat, and play the duke among marquises, 
and the reigning monarch among dukes, if 
he will only outvie them in tranquil/ity. An 
imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect 
patience. Quiet minds cannot be perplexed 



1^2 An Inland Voyage, 

or frightened, but go on in fortune or mis- 
fortune at their own private pace, like a 
clock during a thunder-storm. 

We made a very short day of it to La 
Fire ; but the dusk was falling and a small 
rain had begun before we stowed the boats. 
La Fere is a fortified town in a plain, and has 
two belts of rampart. Between the first and 
the second extends a region of waste land 
and cultivated patches. Here and there 
along the wayside were posters forbidding 
trespass in the name of military engineer- 
ing. At last a second gateway admitted 
us to the town itself. Lighted windows 
looked gladsome, whiffs of comfortable cook- 
ery came abroad upon the air. The town 
was full of the military reserve, out for the 
French Autumn manoeuvres, and the reserv- 
ists walked speedily and wore their formi- 
dable great-coats. It was a fine night to be 



La Fere of Cursed Memory. 173 

within doors over dinner, and hear the rain 
upon the windows. 

The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently 
congratulate each other on the prospect, for 
we had been told there was a capital inn at 
La Fere. Such a dinner as we were going 
to eat ! such beds as we were to sleep in ! 
and all the while the rain raining on house- 
less folk over all the poplared country-side. 
It made our mouths water. The inn bore 
the name of some woodland animal, stag, 
or hart, or hind, I forget which. But I shall 
never forget how spacious and how emi- 
nently habitable it looked as we drew near. 
The carriage entry was lighted up, not by 
intention, but from the mere superfluity of 
fire and candle in the house. A rattle of 
many dishes came to our ears ; we sighted 
a great field of tablecloth ; the kitchen 
glowed like a forge and smelt like a garden 
of things to eat. 



174 -^^ Inland Voyage. 

Into this, the inmost shrine and physiologi- 
cal heart of a hostelry, with all its furnaces 
in action and all its dressers charged with 
viands, you are now to suppose us making 
our triumphal entry, a pair of damp rag-and- 
bone men, each with a limp india-rubber bag 
upon his arm. I do not believe I have a 
sound view of that kitchen ; I saw it through 
a sort of glory, but it seemed to me crowded 
with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all 
turned round from their saucepans and 
looked at us with surprise. There was no 
doubt about the landlady, however; there 
she was, heading her army, a flushed, angry 
woman, full of affairs. Her I asked politely 
— too politely, thinks the Cigarette — if we 
could have beds, she surveying us coldly 
from head to foot. 

** You will find beds in the suburb," she 
remarked. *'We are too busy for the like 
of you." 



La Fire of Cttrsed Memory. 175 

If we could make an entrance, change 
our clothes, and order a bottle of wine, I felt 
sure we could put things right ; so said I, 
" If we cannot sleep, we may at least dine," 
— and was for depositing my bag. 

What a terrible convulsion of nature was 
that which followed in the landlady's face ! 
She made a run at us and stamped her foot. 

"Out with you, — out of the door!" she 
screeched. " Sortez ! sortez ! sortez par la 
porte!'' 

I do not know how it happened, but next 
moment we were out in the rain and dark- 
ness, and I was cursing before the carriage 
entry like a disappointed mendicant. Where 
were the boating men of Belgium ? where 
the judge and his good wines? and where 
the graces of Orignyf Black, black was the 
night after the firelit kitchen, but what was 
that to the blackness in our heart t This 



iy6 An Inland Voyage, 

was not the first time that I have been re- 
fused a lodging. Often and often have I 
planned what I should do if such a misad- 
venture happened to me again. And noth- 
ing is easier to plan. But to put in execu- 
tion, with the heart boiling at the indignity ? 
Try it ; try it only once, and tell me what 
you did. 

It is all very fine to talk about tramps 
and morality. Six hours of police surveil- 
lance (such as I have had) or one brutal 
rejection from an inn door change your 
views upon the subject like a course of lec- 
tures. As long as you keep in the upper 
regions, with all the world bowing to you as 
you go, social arrangements have a very 
handsome air ; but once get under the 
wheels and you wish society were at the 
devil' I will give most respectable men a 
fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer 



La Fere of Cursed Memory, 177 

them twopence for what remains of their 
morality. 

For my part, when I was turned out of 
the Stag, or the Hind, or whatever it was, 
I would have set the temple of Diana on 
fire if it had been handy. There was no 
crime complete enough to express my disap- 
proval of human institutions. As for the 
Cigarette, I never knew a man so altered. 
" We have been taken for pedlars again," 
said he. ** Good God, what it must be to be 
a pedlar in reality ! " He particularized a 
complaint for every joint in the landlady's 
body. Timon was a philanthropist alongside 
of him. And then, when he was at the top 
of his maledictory bent, he would suddenly 
break away and begin whimperingly to com- 
miserate the poor. "I hope to God^' he 
said, — and I trust the prayer was answered, 
— '* that I shall never be uncivil to a pedlar." 
12 



178 An Inland Voyage. 

Was this the imperturbable Cigarette? This, 
this was he. Oh, change beyond report, 
thought, or belief ! 

Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads ; 
and the windows grew brighter as the night 
increased in darkness. We trudged in and 
out of La Fere streets ; we saw shops, and 
private houses where people were copiously 
dining ; we saw stables where carters* nags 
had plenty of fodder and clean straw ; we 
saw no end of reservists, who were very 
sorry for themselves this wet night, I doubt 
not, and yearned for their country homes ; 
but had they not each man his place in La 
Fere barracks } And we, what had we } 

There seemed to be no other inn in the 
whole town. People gave us directions, 
which we followed as best we could, gener- 
ally with the effect of bringing us out again 
upon the scene of our disgrace. We were 



La Fere of Cursed Memory. 1 79 

very sad people indeed, by the time we had 
gone all over La Fere ; and the Cigarette 
had already made up his mind to lie under 
a poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. But 
right at the other end, the house next the 
town-gate was full of light and bustle. 
^^ Basiity aubergistey loge a pied^' was the sign. 
" A la Croix de Malie!' There were we re- 
ceived. 

The room was full of noisy reservists 
drinking and smoking ; and. were very glad 
indeed when the drums and bugles began to 
go about the streets, and one and all had to 
snatch shakoes and be off for the barracks. 

Bazin was a tall man, running to fat ; soft- 
spoken, with a delicate, gentle face. We 
asked him to share our wine ; but he excused 
himself, having pledged reservists all day 
long. This was a very different type of the 
workman-innkeeper from the bawling, dispu- 



l8o An Inland Voyage. 

tatious fellow at Origny. He also loved 
Paris, where he had worked as a decorative 
painter in his youth. There were such op- 
portunities for self-instruction there, he said. 
And if any one has read Zola s description 
of the workman's marriage party visiting the 
Louvre they would do well to have heard 
Bazin by way of antidote. He had delighted 
in the museums in his youth. "One sees there 
little miracles of work," he said ; " that is 
what makes a good workman ; it kindles a 
spark." We asked him how he managed in 
La Fere. " I am married," he said, " and I 
have my pretty children. But frankly, it is 
no life at all. From morning to night I 
pledge a pack of good-enough fellows who 
know nothing." 

It faired as the night went on, and the 
moon came out of the clouds. We sat in 
front of the door, talking softly with Bazin. 



La Fere of Cursed Memory. i8l 

At the guard-house opposite the guard was 
being forever turned out, as trains of field 
artillery kept clanking in out of the night 
or patrols of horsemen trotted by in their 
cloaks. Madame Bazin came out after a 
while ; she was tired with her day's work, 
I suppose ; and she nestled up to her hus- 
band and laid her head upon his breast. He 
had his arm about her and kept gently pat- 
ting her on the shoulder. I think Bazin 
was right, and he was really married. Of 
how few people can the same be said ! 

Little did the Baziiis know how much 
they served us. We were charged for can- 
dles, fot food and drink, and for the beds we 
slept in. But there was nothing in the bill 
for the husband's pleasant talk ; nor for the 
pretty spectacle of their married life. And 
there was yet another item uncharged. For 
these people's politeness really set us up 



1 82 All Inland Voyage. 

again in our own esteem. We had a thirst 
for consideration ; the sense of insult was 
still hot in our spirits ; and civil usage 
seemed to restore us to our position in the 
world. 

How little we pay our way in life ! Al- 
though we have our purses continually in 
our hand, the better part of service goes 
still unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a 
grateful spirit gives as good as it gets. Per- 
haps the Bazins knew how much I liked 
them } perhaps they, also, were healed of 
some slights by the thanks that I gave them 
in my manner? 



DOWN THE OISE. 

THROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY. 

Below La Fh^e the river runs through a 
piece of open pastoral country ; green, opu- 
lent, loved by breeders ; called the Golden 
Valley. In wide sweeps, and with a swift 
and equable gallop, the ceaseless stream of 
water visits and makes green the fields. 
Kine, and horses, and little humorous don- 
keys browse together in the meadows, and 
come down in troops to the river-side to 
drink. They make a strange feature in the 
landscape ; above all when startled, and you 
see them galloping to and fro, with their 
incongruous forms and faces. It gives a 
feeling as of great, unfenced pampas, and 
the herds of wandering nations. There were 



184 A7t Iiilajid Voyage. 

hills in the distance upon either hand ; and 
on one side, the river sometimes bordered 
on the wooded spurs of Coucy and St. Gohain, 
The artillery were practising at La Fere ; 
and soon the cannon of heaven joined in that 
loud play. Two continents of cloud met 
and exchanged salvos overhead ; while all 
round the horizon we could see sunshine and 
clear air upon the hills. What with the 
guns and the thunder, the herds were all 
frighted in the Golden Valley. We could 
see them tossing their heads, and nmning 
to and fro in timorous indecision ; and 
when they had made up their minds, and 
the donkey followed the horse, and the cow 
was after the donkey, we could hear their 
hoofs thundering abroad over the meadows. 
It had a martial sound, like cavalry charges. 
And altogether, as far as the ears are con- 
cerned, we had a very rousing battle piece 
performed for our amusement. 



Down the Oise. 185 

At last, the guns and the thunder dropped 
off ; the sun shone on the wet meadows ; 
the air was scented with the breath of re- 
joicing trees and grass ; and the river kept 
unweariedly carrying us on at its best pace. 
There was a manufacturing district about 
Chaiiny ; and after that the banks grew so 
high that they hid the adjacent country, and 
we could see nothing but clay sides, and one 
willow after another. Only here and there 
we passed by a village or a ferry, and some 
wondering child upon the bank would stare 
after us until we turned the corner. I dare- 
say we continued to paddle in that child's 
dreams for many a night after. 

Sun and shower alternated like day and 
night, making the hours longer by their vari- 
ety. When the showers were heavy I could 
feel each drop striking through my jersey to 
my warm skin ; and the accumulation of 



1 86 An Inland Voyage . 

small shocks put me nearly beside myself. 
I decided I should buy a mackintosh at 
Noyon. It is nothing to get wet ; but the 
misery of these individual pricks of cold all 
over my body at the same instant of time 
made me flail the water with my paddle 
like a madman. The Cigarette was greatly 
amused by these ebullitions. It gave him 
something else to look at besides clay banks 
and willows. 

All the time the river stole away like a 
thief in straight places, or swung round cor- 
ners with an eddy ; the willows nodded and 
were undermined all day long ; the clay 
banks tumbled in ; the Oise, which had been 
so many centuries making the Golden Valley , 
seemed to have changed its fancy and be 
bent upon undoing its performance. What 
a number of things a river does by simply 
following Gravity- in the innocence of its 
heart ! 



NOYON CATHEDRAL. 

Noyon stands about a mile from the 
river, in a little plain surrounded by wooded 
hills, and entirely covers an eminence with 
its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, straight- 
backed cathedral with two stiff towers. As 
we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to 
tumble up-hill one upon another, in the 
oddest disorder ; but for all their scrambling 
they did not attain above the knees of the 
cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, 
over all. • As the streets drew near to this 
presiding genius, through the market-place 
under the Hotel de Ville, they grew emptier 
and more composed. Blank walls and shut- 
tered windows were turned to the great edi- 
fice, and grass grew on the white causeway. 



1 88 A 71 Inland Voyage. 

*' Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the 
place whereon thou standest is holy ground." 
The Hotel du Nord, nevertheless, lights its 
secular tapers within a stone-cast of the 
church ; and we had the superb east end 
before our eyes all morning from the window 
of our bedroom. I have seldom looked on 
the east end of a church with more complete 
sympathy. As it flanges out in three wide 
terraces, and settles down broadly on the 
earth, it looks like the poop of some great 
old battle-ship. Hollow-backed buttresses 
carry vases, which figure for the stern lan- 
terns. There is a roll in the ground, and the 
towers just appear above the pitch of the 
roof, as though the good ship were bowing 
lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any mo- 
ment it might be a hundred feet away from 
you, climbing the next billow. At any mo- 
ment a window might open, and some old 



Noyon Cathedral. 189 

admiral thrust forth a cocked hat and pro- 
ceed to take an observation. The old admirals 
sail the sea no lorfger ; the old ships of 
battle are all broken up, and live only in 
pictures ; but this, that was a church before 
ever they were thought upon, is still a 
church, and makes as brave an appearance by 
the Oise. The cathedral and the river are 
probably the two oldest things for miles 
around ; and certainly they have both a grand 
old age. 

The Sacristan took us to the top of one of 
the towers, and showed us the five bells 
hanging in their loft. From above the town 
was a tessellated pavement of roofs and gar- 
dens ; the old line of rampart was plainly 
traceable ; and the Sacristan pointed out to 
us, far across the plain, in a bit of gleaming 
sky between two clouds, the towers of Chd- 
teaii Coney. 



1 90 Alt Inland Voyage. 

I find I nev^er weary of great churches. 
It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. 
Mankind was never so* happily inspired as 
when it made a cathedral : a thing as single 
and specious as a statue to the first glance, 
and yet, on examination, as lively and inter- 
esting as a forest in detail. The height of 
spires cannot be taken by trigonometry ; 
they measure absurdly short, but how tall 
they are to the admiring eye ! And where 
we have so many elegant proportions, grow- 
ing one out of the other, and all together 
into one, it seems as if proportion tran- 
scended itself and became something differ- 
ent and more imposing. I could never 
fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice 
to preach in a cathedral. What is he to say 
that will not be an anti-climax .^ For though 
I have heard a considerable variety of ser. 
mons, I never yet heai'd one that was so 



Noyon Cathedral. 191 

expressive as a cathedral. 'T is the best 
preacher itself, and preaches day and night ; 
not only telling you of man's art and aspira- 
tions in the past, but convicting your own 
soul of ardent sympathies ; or rather, like all 
good preachers, it sets you preaching to 
yourself, — and every man is his own doctor 
of divinity in the last resort. 

As I sat outside of the hotel in the course 
of the afternoon, the sweet, groaning thunder 
of the organ floated out of the church like a 
summons. I was not averse, liking the the- 
atre so well, to sit out an act or two of the 
play, but I could never rightly make out the 
nature of the service I beheld. Four or five 
priests and as many choristers were singing 
Miserere before the high altar when I went 
in. There was no congregation but a few 
old women on chairs and old men kneeling 
on the pavement. After a while a long train 



192 An InlaJid Voyage, 

of young girls, walking two and two, each 
with a lighted taper in her hand, and all 
dressed in black with a white veil, came from 
behind the altar and began to descend the 
nave ; the four first carrying a Virgin and 
child upon a table. The priests and choris- 
ters arose from their knees and followed 
after, singing "Ave Mary " as they went. 
In this order they made the circuit of the 
cathedral, passing twice before me where I 
leaned against a pillar. The priest who 
seemed of moit consequence was a strange, 
down-looking old man. He kept mumbling 
prayers with his lips ; but, as he looked upon 
me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer 
were uppermost in his heart. Two others, 
who bore the burden of the chant, were 
stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty, 
with bold, over-fed eyes; they sang with 
some lustiness, and trolled forth "Ave 



Noyon Cat he dial. 193 

Mary" like a garrison catch. The little girls 
were timid and grave. As they footed 
slowly up the aisle, each one took a mo- 
ment's glance at the Englishman ; and the 
big nun who played marshal fairly stared 
him out of countenance. As for the choris- 
ters, from first to last they misbehaved as 
only boys can misbehave, and cruelly marred 
the performance with their antics. 

I understood a great deal of the spirit of 
what went on. Indeed, it would be difficult 
not to understand the Miserere^ which I take 
to be the composition of an atheist. If it 
ever be a good thing to take such despond- 
ency to heart, the Miserere is the right music 
and a cathedral a fit scene. So far I am at 
one with the Catholics, — an odd name for 
them, after all ? But why, in Gods name, 
these holiday choristers } why these priests 
who steal wandering looks about the congre- 

13 



194 ^^^ Inlmid Voyage, 

gation while they feign to be at prayer ? why 
this fat nun, who rudely arranges her pro- 
cession and shakes delinquent virgins by the 
elbow ? why this spitting, and snuffing, and 
forgetting of keys, and the thousand and one 
little misadventures that disturb a frame of 
mind, laboriously edified with chants and 
organings ? In any play-house reverend 
fathers may see what can be done with a 
little art, and how, to move high sentiments, 
it is necessary to drill the supernumeraries 
and have every stool in its proper place. 

One other circumstance distressed me. I 
could bear a Miserere myself, having had a 
good deal of open-air exercise of late ; but I 
wished the old people somewhere else. It 
was neither the right sort of music nor the 
right sort of divinity for men and women 
who have come through most accidents by 
this time, and probably have an opinion of 



Noyon Cathedral. 195 

their own upon the tragic element in life. 
A person up in years can generally do his 
own Miserere for himself ; although I notice 
that such an one often prefers yiibilate Deo 
for his ordinary singing. On the whole, the 
most religious exercise for the aged is prob- 
ably to recall their own experience ; so many 
friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, so 
many slips and stumbles, and withal so many 
bright days and smiling providences ; there 
is surely the matter of a very eloquent ser- 
mon in all this. 

On the whole, I was greatly solemnized. 
In the little pictorial map of our whole In- 
land Voyage^ which my fancy still preserves, 
and sometimes unrolls for the amusement of 
odd moments, Noyon cathedral figures on a 
most preposterous scale, and must be nearly 
as large as a department. I can still see the 
faces of the priests as if they were at my 



196 Alt Inland Voyage, 

elbow, and hear Ave Mariay or a pro nobis 
sounding through the church. All Noyon is 
blotted out for me by these superior memo- 
ries ; and I do not care to say more about 
the place. It was but a stack of brown roofs 
at the best, where I believe people live very 
reputably in a quiet way ; but the shadow of 
the church falls upon it when the sun is low, 
and the five bells are heard in all quarters, 
telling that the organ has begun. If ever I 
join the church of Rome I shall stipulate to 
be Bishop of Noyon on the Oise, 



DOWN THE OISE. 

TO COMPIEGNE. 

The most patient people grow weary at 
last with being continually wetted with rain ; 
except, of course, in the Scotch Highia?idSy 
where there are not enough fine intervals to 
point the difference. That was like to be 
our case the day we left Noyon. I remem- 
ber nothing of the voyage ; it was nothing 
but clay banks, and willows, and rain ; in- 
cessant, pitiless, beating rain ; until we 
stopped -to lunch at a little inn at PiinpreZy 
where the canal ran very near the river. 
We were so sadly drenched that the land- 
lady lit a few sticks in the chimney for 
our comfort ; there we sat in a steam of 
vapor lamenting our concerns. The hus- 



198 An Inland Voyage, 

band donned a game-bag and strode out to 
shoot ; the wife sat in a far corner watching 
us. I think we were worth looking at. We 
grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere ; 
we forecast other La Feres in the future, 
— although things went better with the 
Cigarette for spokesman ; he had more 
aplomb altogether than I ; and a dull, positive 
way of approaching a landlady that carried 
off the india-rubber bags. Talking of La 
Fere put us talking of the reservists. 

" Reservery," said he, " seems a pretty 
mean way to spend one's autumn holiday." 

" About as mean/* returned I, dejectedly, 
*' as canoeing." 

"These gentlemen travel for their pleas- 
ure .-* " asked the landlady, with unconscious 
irony. 

It was too much. The scales fell from our 
eyes. Another wet day, it was determined, 
and we put the boats into the train. 



Down the Oise. 199 

The weather took the hint. That was our 
last wetting. The afternoon faired up ; 
grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but 
now singly, and with a depth of blue around 
their path ; and a sunset, in the daintiest rose 
and gold, inaugurated a thick night of stars 
and a month of unbroken weather. At the 
same time, the river began to give us a bet- 
ter outlook into the country. The banks 
were not so high, the willows disappeared 
from along the margin, and pleasant hills 
stood all along its course and marked their 
profile on the sky. 

In a little while, the canal coming to its 
last lock, began to discharge its water houses 
on the Oise ; so that we had no lack of com- 
pany to fear. Here were all our own friends ; 
the Deo Gratias Cond^ and the Four Sons of 
Aymon journeyed cheerily down the stream 
along with us ; we exchanged waterside 



200 An Inland Voyage, 

pleasantries with the steersman perched 
among the lumber, or the driver hoarse with 
bawling to his horses ; and the children 
came and looked over the side as we paddled 
by. We had never known all this while how 
much we missed them ; but it gave us a fillip 
to see the smoke from their chimneys. 

A little below this junction we made 
another meeting of yet more account. For 
there we were joined by the AisnCy already 
a far-travelled river and fresh out of Cham- 
pagne. Here ended the adolescence of the 
Oise ; this was his marriage day ; thence- 
forward he had a stately, brimming march, 
conscious of his own dignity and sundry 
dams. He became a tranquil feature in the 
scene. The trees and towns saw themselves 
in him, as in a mirror. He carried the 
canoes lightly on his broad breast ; there 
was no need to work hard against an eddy. 



Down the Oise. 201 

but idleness became the order of the day, 
and mere straightforward dipping of the 
paddle, now on this side, now on that, with- 
out intelligence or effort. Truly we were 
coming into halcyon weather upon all ac- 
counts, and were floated towards the sea like 
gentlemen. 

We made Comptcgne as the sun was going 
down : a fine profile of a town above the 
river. Over the bridge a regiment was 
parading to- the drum. People loitered on 
the quay, some fishing, some looking idly 
at the stream. And as the two boats shot 
in along the water, we could see them point- 
ing them ' out and speaking one to another. 
We landed at a floating lavatory, where the 
washerwomen were still beating the clothes. 



AT COMPlfcGNE. 

We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Com- 
piegne, where nobody observed our presence. 

Reservery and general militarismus (as the 
Germans call it) was rampant. A camp of 
conical white tents without the town looked 
like a leaf out of a picture Bible ; sword-belts 
decorated the walls of the caf^s, and the 
streets kept sounding all day long with mili- 
tary music. It was not possible to be an 
Englishman and avoid a feeling of elation ; 
for the men who followed the drums were 
small and walked shabbily. Each man in- 
clined at his own angle, and jolted to his 
own convenience as he went. There was 
nothing of the superb gait with which a 
regiment of tall Highlanders moves behind 



At Compiegjje. 203 

its music, solemn and inevitable, like a 
natural phenomenon. Who, that has seen 
it, can forget the drum-major pacing in front, 
the drummers' tiger skins, the pipers' swing- 
ing plaids, the strange, elastic rhythm of the 
whole regiment footing it in time, and the 
bang of the drum when the brasses cease, 
and the shrill pipes take up the martial story 
in their place ? 

A girl at school in France began to de- 
scribe one of our regiments on parade to 
her French schoolmates, and as she went 
on, she told me the recollection grew so 
vivid, she became so proud to be the country- 
woman of such soldiers, and so sorry to be 
in another country, that her voice failed her 
and she burst into tears. I have never for- 
gotten that girl, and I think she very nearly 
deserves a statue. To call her a young lady, 
with all its niminy associations, would be to 



204 -^^ Inland Voyage. 

offer her an insult. She may rest assured 
of one thing, although she never should 
marry a heroic general, never see any great 
or immediate result of her life, she will not 
have lived in vain for her native land. 

But though French soldiers show to ill- 
advantage on parade, on the march they 
are gay, alert, and willing, like a troop of 
fox-hunters. I remember once seeing a 
company pass through the forest of Fo7t'' 
tainebleau, on the Chailly road, between the 
Bas Breau and the Reine Blanche. One 
fellow walked a little before the rest, and 
sang a loud, audacious marching song. The 
rest bestirred their feet, and even swung 
their muskets in time. A young ofBcer on 
horseback had hard ado to keep his counte- 
nance at the words. You never saw anything 
so cheerful and spontaneous as their gait ; 
school-boys do not look more eagerly at hare 



At Compi^gne. 205 

and hounds ; and you would have thought 
it impossible to tire such willing marchers. 
My great delight in Cotnpiegne was the 
town hall. I doted upon the town hall. It is a 
monument of Gothic insecurity, all turreted, 
and gargoyled, and slashed, and bedizened 
with half a score of architectural fancies. 
Some of the niches are gilt and painted ; 
and in a great square panel in the centre, 
in black relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII, 
rides upon a pacing horse, with hand on hip, 
and head thrown back. There is royal arro- 
gance in every line of him ; the stirrupped 
foot projects insolently from the frame ; the 
eye is hard and proud ; the very horse seems 
to be treading with gratification over pros- 
trate serfs, and to have the breath of the 
trumpet in his nostrils. So rides forever, 
on the front of the town hall, the good king 
Lotds XIL, the father of his people. 



2o6 An Inland Voyage. 

Over the king's head, in the tall centre 
turret, appears the dial of a clock ; and high 
above that, three little mechanical figures, 
each one with a hammer in his hand, whose 
business it is to chime out the hours, and 
halves, and quarters for the burgesses of Corn- 
piegne. The centre figure has a gilt breast- 
plate ; the two others wear gilt trunk-hose ; 
and they all three have elegant, flapping hats 
like cavaliers. As the quarter approaches 
they turn their heads and look knowingly 
one to the other ; and then, kling go the 
three hammers on three little bells below. 
The hour follows, deep and sonorous, from 
the interior of the tower; and the gilded 
gentlemen rest from their labors with con- 
tentment. 

I had a great deal of healthy pleasure 
from their manoeuvres, and took good care 
to miss as few performances as possible ; 



At Compiegne. 207 

and I found that even the Cigarette^ while 
he pretended to despise my enthusiasm, 
was more or less a devotee himself. There 
is something highly absurd in the exposition 
of such toys to the outrages of winter on a 
housetop. They would be more in keeping 
in a glass case before a Niirnberg clock. 
Above all, at night, when the children are 
abed, and even grown people are snoring 
under quilts, does it not seem impertinent 
to leave these gingerbread figures winking 
and tinkling to the stars and the rolling 
moon } The gargoyles may fitly enough 
twist their ape-like heads ; fitly enough 
may the' potentate bestride his charger, 
like a centurion in an old German print of 
the Via Dolorosa ; but the toys should be 
put away in a box among some cotton, until 
the sun rises, and the children are abroad 
again to be amused. 



208 An Inland Voyage. 

In Compiegne post-office a great packet of 
letters awaited us ; and the authorities were, 
for this occasion only,- so polite as to hand 
them over upon application. 

In some way, our journey may be said -to 
end with this letter-bag at Compiegne. The 
spell was broken. We had partly come home 
from that moment. 

No one should have any correspondence 
on a journey; it is bad enough to have to 
write ; but the receipt of letters is the 
death of all holiday feeling. 

*' Out of my country and myself I go." I 
wish to take a dive among new conditions 
for a while, as into another element. I have 
nothing to do with my friends or my affec- 
tions for the time ; when I came away, I 
left my heart at home in a desk, or sent it 
forward with portmanteau to await me at my 
destination. After my journey is over, I 



At Compicgne, 209 

shall not fail to read your admirable letters 
with the attention they deserve. But I have 
paid all this money, look you, and paddled 
all these strokes, for no other purpose than 
to be abroad ; and yet you keep me at home 
with your perpetual communications. You 
tug the string, and I feel that I am a teth- 
ered bird. You pursue me all over Europe 
with the little vexations that I came away to 
avoid. There is no discharge in the war of 
life, I am well aware ; but shall there not be 
so much as a week's furlough } 

We were up by six, the day we were to 
leave. They had taken so little note of us 
that I hardly thought they would have con- 
descended on a bill. But they did, with some 
smart particulars, too ; and we paid in a civ- 
ilized manner to an uninterested clerk, and 
went out of that hotel, with the india-rubber 
bags, unremarked. No one cared to know 
14 



2IO An Inland Voyage. 

about us. It is not possible to rise before 
a village ; but ConipDgiie was so grown a 
town that it took its ease in the morning ; 
and we were up and away while it was still 
in dressing-gown and slippers. The streets 
were left to people washing door-steps ; no- 
body was in full dress but the cavaliers upon 
the town hall ; they were all washed with 
dew, spruce in their gilding, and full of in- 
telligence and a sense of professional re- 
sponsibility. Kling went they on the bells 
for the half past six, as we went by. I took 
it kind of them to make me this parting 
compliment ; they never were in better form, 
not even at noon upon a Sunday. 

There was no one to see us off but the 
early washerwomen, — early and late, — who 
were already bearing the linen in their float- 
ing lavatory on the river. They were very 
merry and matutinal in their ways ; plunged 



At Compiegne, \ 2ii 

their arms boldly in, and seemed not to feel 
the shock. It would be dispiriting to me, 
this early beginning and first cold dabble, of 
a most dispiriting day's work. But I believe 
they would have been as unwilling to change 
days with us as we could be to change with 
them. They crowded to the door to watch 
us paddle away into the thin sunny mists 
upon the river; and shouted heartily after us 
till we were through the bridge. 



CHANGED TIMES. 

There is a sense in which those mists 
never rose from off our journey ; and from 
that time forth they lie very densely in my 
note-book. As long as the Oise was a small, 
rural river it took us near by people's doors, 
and we could hold a conversation with natives 
in the riparian fields. But now that it had 
grown so wide, the life along shore passed us 
by at a distance. It was the same difference 
as between a great public highway and a coun- 
try bypath that wanders in and out of cottage 
gardens. We now lay in towns, where no- 
body troubled us with questions ; we had 
floated into civilized life, where people pass 
without salutaion. In sparsely inhabited pla- 



Changed Times. 213 

ces we make all we can of each encounter ; 
but when it comes to a city, we keep to our- 
selves, and never speak unless we have trodden 
on a man's toes. In these waters we were no 
longer strange birds, and nobody supposed 
we had travelled farther than from the last 
town. I remember, when we came into 
U Isle Adanty for instance, how we met dozens 
of pleasure-boats outing it for the afternoon, 
and there was nothing to distinguish the true 
voyager from the amateur, except, perhaps, 
the filthy condition of my sail. The com- 
pany in one boat actually thought they recog- 
nized me for a neighbor. Was there ever 
anything more wounding } All the romance 
had come down to that. Now, on the upper 
Oise, where nothing sailed, as a general thing, 
but fish, a pair of canoeists could not be thus 
vulgarly explained away ; we were strange 
and picturesque intruders ; and out of peo- 



214 ^^^ Inland Voyage. 

pie's wonder sprang a sort of light and pass- 
ing intimacy all along our route. There is 
nothing but tit for tat in this world, though 
sometimes it be a little difficult to trace : for 
the scores are older than we ourselves, and 
there has never yet been a settling-day since 
things were. You get entertainment pretty 
much in proportion as you give. As long as 
we were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared 
at and followed like a quack doctor or a cara- 
van, we had no want of amusement in return ; 
but as soon as we sank into commonplace 
ourselves, all whom we met were similarly 
disenchanted. And here is one reason of a 
dozen why the world is dull to dull persons. 

In our earlier adventures there was gener- 
ally something to do, and that quickened us. 
Even the showers of rain had a revivifying 
effect, and shook up the brain from torpor. 
But now, when the river no longer ran in a 



Changed Times. 215 

proper sense, only glided seaward with an 
even, outright, but imperceptible speed, and 
when the sky smiled upon us day after day 
without variety, we began to slip into that 
golden doze of the mind which follows upon 
much exercise in the open air. I have stupe- 
fied myself in this way more than once : in- 
deed, I dearly love the feeling; but I never 
had it to the same degree as when paddling 
down the Oise. It was the apotheosis of 
stupidity. 

We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes, 
when I found a new paper, I took a particu- 
lar pleasure in reading a single number of 
the current novel ; but I never could bear 
more than three instalments ; and even the 
second was a disappointment. As soon as 
the tale became in any way perspicuous, it 
lost all merit in my eyes ; only a single 
scene, or, as is the way with these feuillet07is^ 



2i6 Ajt Inland Voyage. 

half a scene, without antecedent or conse- 
quence, like a piece of a dream, had the 
knack of fixing my interest. The less I saw 
of the novel the better I liked it : a preg- 
nant reflection. But for the most part, as I 
said, we neither of us read anything in the 
world, and employed the very little while we 
were awake between bed and dinner in por- 
ing upon maps. I have always been fond 
of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with the 
greatest enjoyment. The names of places 
are singularly inviting ; the contour of coasts 
and rivers is enthralling to the eye ; and to 
hit in a map upon some place you have heard 
of before makes history a new possession. 
But we thumbed our charts, on those even- 
ings, with the blankest unconcern. We 
cared not a fraction for this place or that. 
We stared at the sheet as children listen to 
their rattle, and read the names of towns oi 



Cha7tged Times. 217 

villages to forget them again at once. We 
had no romance in the matter ; there was 
nobody so fancy-free. If you had taken the 
maps away while we were studying them 
most intently, it is a fair bet whether we 
might not have continued to study the table 
with the same delight. 

About one thing we were mightily taken 
up, and that was eating. I think I made a 
god of my belly. I remember dwelling in 
imagination upon this or that dish till my 
mouth watered ; and long before we got in 
for the night my appetite was a clamant, 
instant annoyance. Sometimes we paddled 
alongside for a while and whetted each other 
with gastronomical fancies as we went. 
Cake and sherry, a homely refection, but 
not within reach upon the Oise, trotted 
through my head for many a mile ; and once, 
as we were approaching Verberie^ the Ciga- 



2i8 A7t Inland Voyage. 

rette brought my heart into my mouth by the 
suggestion of oyster patties and Sauterne. 

I suppose none of us recognize the great 
part that is played in life by eating and 
drinking. The appetite is so imperious that 
we can stomach the least interesting viands, 
and pass off a dinner hour thankfully enough 
on bread and water ; just as there are men 
who must read something, if it were only 
Bradshaw s Guide. But there is a romance 
about the matter, after all. Probably the 
table has more devotees than love ; and I 
am sure that food is much more generally 
entertaining than scenery. Do you give in, 
as Walt Whitinan would sa}(^'Jthat you are 
any the less immortal for that ? The true 
materialism is to be ashamed of what we are. 
To detect the flavor of an olive is no less a 
piece of human perfection than to find 
beauty in the colors of the sunset. 



Changed Times, 219 

Canoeing was easy work. To dip the 
paddle at the proper inclination, now right, 
now left ; to keep the head down stream ; 
to empty the little pool that gathered in the 
lap of the apron; to screw up the eyes 
against the glittering sparkles of sun upon 
the water ; or now and again to pass below 
the whistling tow-rope of the Deo Gratias of 
Conde, or Four Sons of Aymon, — there was 
not much art in that ; certainly silly muscles 
managed it between sleep and waking ; and 
meanwhile the brain had a whole holiday, 
and went to sleep. We took in at a glance 
the larger features of the scene, and beheld, 
with half an eye, Housed fishers and dab- 
bling washerwomen on the bank. Now and 
again we might be half wakened by some 
church spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail 
of river grass that clung about the paddle 
and had to be plucked off and thrown away. 



220 Aji Inland Voyage. 

But these luminous intervals were only par- 
tially luminous. A little more of us was 
called into action, but never the whole. 
The central bureau of nerves, what in some 
moods we call Onrselves^ enjoyed its holiday 
without disturbance, like a Government 
Office. The great wheels of intelligence 
turned idly in the head, like fly-wheels, 
grinding no grist. I have gone on for half 
an hour at a time, counting my strokes and 
forgetting the hundreds. I flatter myself 
the beasts that perish could not underbid 
that, as a low form of consciousness. And 
what a pleasure it was ! What a hearty, 
tolerant temper did it bring about! There 
is nothing captious about a man who has 
attained to this, the one possible apotheosis in 
life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity ; and he begins 
to feel dignified and longevous like a tree. 
There was one odd piece of practical meta- 



Changed Times, 221 



«i> 



physics which accompanied what I may call 
the depth, if I must not call it the intensity, 
of my abstraction. What philosophers call 
me and not nie^ ego and non ego, preoccupied 
me whether I would or no. There was less 
me and more not me than I was accustomed 
to expect. I looked on upon somebody else, 
who managed the paddling ; I was aware of 
somebody else's feet against the stretcher ; 
my own body seemed to have no more inti- 
mate relation to me than the canoe, or the 
river, or the river banks. Nor this alone : 
something inside my mind, a part of my 
brain, a province of my proper being, had 
thrown off allegiance and set up for itself, or 
perhaps for the somebody else who did the 
paddling. I had dwindled into quite a little 
thing in a corner of myself. I was isolated 
in my own skull. Thoughts presented 
themselves unbidden ; they were not my 



222 An Inla7td Voyage. 

thoughts, they were plainly some one else's ; 
and I considered them like a part of the 
landscape. I take it, in short, that I was 
about as near Nirvana as would be conve- 
nient in practical life ; and, if this be so, 
I make the Buddhists my sincere compli- 
ments ; 't is an agreeable state, not very con- 
sistent with mental brilliancy, not exactly 
profitable in a money point of view, but very 
calm, golden, and incurious, and one that 
sets a man superior to alarms. It may be 
best figured by supposing yourself to get 
dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it. 
I have a notion that open-air laborers must 
spend a large portion of their days in this 
ecstatic stupor, which explains their high 
composure and endurance. A pity to go to 
the expense of laudanum when here is a 
better paradise for nothing ! 

This frame of mind was the great exploit 



Changed Times. 223 

of our voyage, take it all in all. It was the 
farthest piece of travel accomplished. In' 
deed, it lies so far from beaten paths of 
language that I despair of getting the reader 
into sympathy with the smiling, compla- 
cent idiocy of my condition ; when ideas 
came and went like motes in a sunbeam ; 
when trees and church spires along the bank 
surged up from time to time into my notice, 
like solid objects through a rolling cloud- 
land ; when the rhythmical swish of boat 
and paddle in the water became a cradle- 
song to lull ' my thoughts asleep; when a 
piece of mud on the deck was sometimes an 
intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a 
companion for me, and the object of pleased 
consideration ; and all the time, with the 
river running and the shores changing upon 
either hand, I kept counting my strokes and 
forgetting the hundreds, the happiest animal 
in France, 



DOWN THE OISE. 

CHURCH INTERIORS. 

We made our first stage below Compiegne 
to Font Sainte Maxence. I was abroad a 
little after six the next morning. The air was 
biting and smelt of frost. In an open place 
a score of women wrangled together over the 
day's market ; and the noise of their negotia- 
tion sounded thin and querulous, like that 
of sparrows on a winter's morning. The 
rare passengers blew into their hands, and 
shuffled in their wooden shoes to set the 
blood agog. The streets were full of icy 
shadow, although the chimneys were smok- 
ing overhead in golden sunshine. If you 
wake early enough at this season of the year, 



Down the Oise, 225 

you may get up in December to break your 
fast in ytme. 

I found my way to the church, for there is 
always something to see about a church, 
whether living worshippers or dead men's 
tombs ; you find there the deadliest earnest, 
and the hollowest deceit ; and even where it 
is not a piece of history, it will be certain 
to leak out some contemporary gossip. It 
was scarcely so cold in the church as it was 
without, but it looked colder. The white 
nave was positively arctic to the eye ; and 
the tawdriness of a continental altar looked 
more forlorn than usual in the solitude and 
the bleak air. Two priests sat in the chancel 
reading and waiting penitents ; and out in 
the nave one very old woman was engaged 
in her devotions. It was a wonder how she 
was able to pass her beads when healthy 
young people were breathing in their palms 
IS 



226 An Inland Voyage, 

and slapping their chest ; but though this 
concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by 
the nature of her exercises. She went from 
chair to chair, from altar to altar, circum- 
navigating the church. To each shrine she 
dedicated an equal number of beads and an 
equal length of time. Like a prudent capi- 
talist with a somewhat cynical view of the 
commercial prospect, she desired to place her 
supplications in a great variety of heavenly 
securities. She would risk nothing on the 
credit of any single intercessor. Out of the 
whole company of saints and angels, not one 
but was to suppose himself her champion 
elect against the Great Assizes ! I could only 
think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, 
based upon unconscious unbelief. 

She was as dead an old woman as ever I 
saw ; no more than bone and parchment, cu- 
riously put together. Her eyes, with which 



Down the Oise, 22 J 

she interrogated mine, were vacant of sense. 
It depends on what you call seeing, whether 
you might not call her blind. Perhaps she 
had known love : perhaps borne children, 
suckled them, and given them pet names. 
But now that was all gone by, and had left 
her neither happier nor wiser ; and the best 
she could do with her morningb was to come 
up here into the cold church and juggle for a 
slice of heaven. It was not without a gulp 
that I escaped into the streets and the keen 
morning air. Morning ? why, how tired of it 
she would be before night ! and if she did not 
sleep, how then ? It is fortunate that not 
many of us are brought up publicly to justify 
our lives at the bar of threescore years and 
ten ; fortunate that such a number are 
knocked opportunely on the head in what 
they call the flower of their years, and go 
away to suffer for their follies in private 



228 An Inland Voyage, 

somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick 
children and discontented old folk, we might 
be put out of all conceit of life. 

I had need of all my cerebral hygiene dur- 
ing that day's paddle : the old devotee stuck 
in my throat sorely. But I was soon in the 
seventh heaven of stupidity ; and knew noth- 
ing but that somebody was paddling a canoe, 
while I was counting his strokes and forgetting 
the hundreds. I used sometimes to be afraid 
I should remember the hundreds ; which 
would have made a toil of a pleasure ; but 
the terror was chimerical, they went out of 
my mind by enchantment, and I knew no 
more than the man in the moon about my 
only occupation. 

At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we 
left the canoes in another floating lavatory, 
which, as it was high noon, was packed with 
washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced; 



Down the Oise, 229 

and they and their broad jokes are about all I 
remember of the place. I could look up my 
history books, if you were very anxious, and 
tell you a date or two ; for it figured rather 
largely in the English wars. But I prefer to 
mention a girls' boarding-school, which had 
an interest for us because it was a girls' 
boarding-school, and because we imagined we 
had rather an interest for it. At least, 
there were the girls about the garden ; and 
here were we on the river ; and there was more 
than one handkerchief waved as we went 
by. It caused quite a stir in my heart ; and 
yet how we should have wearied and de- 
spised each other, these girls and I, if we had 
been introduced at a croquet party ! But 
this is a fashion I love : to kiss the hand or 
wave a handkerchief to people I shall never 
see again, to play with possibility, and knock 
in a peg for fancy to hang upon. It gives the 



230 An Inland Voyage. 

traveller a jog, reminds him that he is not a 
traveller everywhere, and that his journey is 
no more than a siesta by the way on the real 
march of life. 

The church at Creil was a nondescript 
place in the inside, splashed with gaudy 
lights from the windows, and picked out with 
medallions of the Dolorous Way. But there 
was one oddity, in the way of an ex votOy 
which pleased me hugely : a faithful model of 
a canal boat, swung from the vault, with a 
written aspiration that God should conduct 
the Saint Nicholas of Creil to a good haven. 
The thing was neatly executed, and would 
have made the delight of a party of boys on 
the water-side. But what tickled me was the 
gravity of the peril to be conjured. You 
might hang up the model of a sea-going ship, 
and welcome : one that is to plough a furrow 
round the world, and visit the tropic or the 



Down the Oise. 23 1 

frosty poles, runs dangers that are well worth 
a candle and a mass. But the Saint Nicho- 
las of Creily which was to be tugged for some 
ten years by patient draught horses, in a 
weedy canal, \yith the poplars chattering over- 
head, and the skipper whistling at the tiller ; 
which was to do all its errands in green, 
inland places, and never got out of sight of a 
village belfry in all its cruising ; why, you 
would have thought if anything could be done 
without the intervention of Providence, it 
would be that ! But perhaps the skipper was 
a humorist : or perhaps a prophet, reminding 
people of the seriousness of life by this pre- 
posterous token. 

At Creil, as at Noyon, Saint Joseph seemed 
a favorite saint on the score of punctuality. 
Day and hour can be specified ; and grateful 
people do not fail to specify them on a votive 
tablet, when prayers have been punctually and 



232 A;/ Inlaiid Voyage. 

neatly answered. Whenever time is a consid- 
eration, Saint yoseph is the proper interme- 
diary. I took a sort of pleasure in observing 1 
the vogue he had in France, for the good man 

plays a very small part in my religion at • 

'1 

home. Yet I could not help fearing that, ' 

where the saint is so much commended for 
exactitude, he will be expected to be very 
grateful for his tablet. 

This is foolishness to us Protestants ; and : 

not of great importance any way. Whether 
people's gratitude for the good gifts that ; 

come to them be wisely conceived or duti- 
fully expressed is a secondary matter, after 
all, so long as they feel gratitude. The true ; 

ignorance is when a man does not know that ! 

he has received a good gift, or begins to \ 

imagine that he has got it for himself. The j 

self-made man is the funniest windbag after j 

all ! There is a marked difference between 1 



Down the Oise, 233 

decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the 
gas in a metropolitan back-parlor with a box 
of patent matches; and, do what we will, 
there is always something made to our hand, 
if it were only our fingers. 

But there was somethinsr worse than fool- 

o 

ishness placarded in Creil Church. The As- 
sociaiioit of the Living Rosary (of which I had 
never previously heard) is responsible for 
thai;. This association was founded, accord- 
ing to the printed advertisement, by a brief of 
Pope Gregory Sixteenth, on the 17th of yan- 
ttaryy 1832 : according to a colored bas-relief, 
it seems to have been founded, some time or 
other, by the Virgin giving one rosary to 
Saint DominiCy and the Infant Saviour giving 
another to Saint Catherine of Sienna. Pope 
Gregory is not so imposing, but he is nearer 
hand. I could not distinctly make out 
whether the association was entirely devo- 



234 ^i Inland Voyage. 

tional, or had an eye to good works ; at least 
it is highly organized : the names of fourteen 
matrons and misses were filled in for each 
week of the month as associates, with one 
other, generally a married woman, at the top 
for Zelatrice, the choragus of the band. In- 
dulgences, plenary and partial, follow on the 
performance of the duties of the association. 
" The partial indulgences are attached to the 
recitation of the rosary." On " the recitation 
of the required dizaitie,'' a partial indulgence 
promptly follows. When people serve the 
kingdom of Heaven with a pass-book in their 
hands, I should always be afraid lest they 
should carry the same commercial spirit into 
their dealings with their fellow-men, which- 
would make a sad and sordid business of this 
life. 

There is one more article, however, of hap- 
pier import. " All these indulgences," it ap- 



Down the Oise. 235 

peared, "are applicable to souls in purgatory." 
For God's sake, ye ladies of Creily apply them 
all to the souls in purgatory without delay ! 
Burns would take no hire for his last songs, 
preferring to serve his country out of unmixed 
love. Suppose you were to imitate the ex- 
ciseman, mesdames, and even if the souls in 
purgatory were not greatly bettered, some 
souls in Creil upon the Oise would find them- 
selves none the worse either here or here- 
after. 

I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe 
these notes, whether a Protestant born and 
bred is in a fit state to understand these 
signs, and do them what justice they de- 
serve ; and I cannot help answering that he 
is not. They cannot look so merely ugly and 
mean to the faithful as they do to me. I see 
that as clearly as a proposition in Euclid. 
For these believers are neither weak nor 



236 An Inland Voyage, 

wicked. They can put up their tablet com' 
mending Saint yoseph for his despatch as if 
he were still a village carpenter ; they can 
" recite the required dizaine',' and metaphori- 
cally pocket the indulgences as if they had 
doiiie a job for heaven ; and then they can go 
out and look down unabashed upon this won- 
derful river flowing by, and up without con- 
fusion at the pin-point stars, which are 
themselves great worlds full of flowing rivers 
greater than the Oise. I see it as plainly, I say, 
as a proposition in Euclid, that my Protestant 
mind has missed the point, and that there 
goes with these deformities some higher and 
more religious spirit than I dream. 

I wonder if other people would make the 
same allowances for me ? Like the ladies of 
Creil, having recited my rosary of toleration, 
I look for my indulgence on the spot. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES. 

We made Prkcy about sundown. The 
plain is rich with tufts of poplar. In a wide, 
luminous curve the Oise lay under the 
hillside. A faint mist began to rise and 
confound the different distances together. 
There was not a sound audible but that of 
the sheep-bells in some meadows by the 
river, and the creaking of a cart down the 
long road that descends the hill. The villas 
in their gardens, the shops along the street, 
all seemed to have been deserted the day 
before ; and I felt inclined to walk discreetly 
as one feels in a silent forest. All of a sud- 
den we came round a corner, and there, in a 
little green round the church, was a bevy of 
girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet 



238 An Inland Voyage, 

Their laughter and the hollow sound of ball 
and mallet made a cheery stir in the neigh- 
borhood ; and the look of these slim figures, 
all corseted and ribboned, produced an an- 
swerable disturbance in our hearts. We 
were within sniff of Paris, it seemed. And 
here were females of our own species playing 
croquet, just as if Pr^cy had been a place in 
real life instead of a stage in the fairy-land 
of travel. For, to be frank, the peasant- 
woman is scarcely to be counted as a woman 
at all, and after having passed by such a 
succession of people in petticoats digging, 
and hoeing, and making dinner, this com- 
pany of coquettes under arms made quite a 
surprising feature in the landscape, and con- 
vinced us at once of being fallible males. 

The inn at Precy is the worst inn in 
France. Not even in Scotland have I found 
worse fare. It was kept by a brother and 



Pricy and the Marionettes. 239 

sister, neither of whom was out of their 
teens. The sister, so to speak, prepared a 
meal for us ; and the brother, who had been 
tippHng, came in and brought with him a 
tipsy butcher, to entertain us as we ate. 
We found pieces of loo-warm pork among 
the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding 
substance in the ragout. The butcher enter- 
tained us with pictures of Parisian life, with 
which he professed himself well acquainted ; 
the brother sitting the while on the edge of 
the billiard table, toppling precariously, and 
sucking the stump of a cigar. In the midst 
of these diversions bang went a drum past 
the house, and a hoarse voice began issuing 
a proclamation. It was a man with mario- 
nettes announcing a performance for that 
evening. 

He had set up his caravan and lighted his 
candles on another part of the girls' croquet 



240 An Inland Voyage. 

green, under one of those open sheds which 
are so common in France to shelter markets ; 
and he and his wife, by the time we strolled 
up there, were trying to keep order with the 
audience. 

It was the most absurd contention. The 
show-people had set out a certain number of 
benches ; and all who sat upon them were to 
pay a couple of sous for the accommodation. 
They were always quite full — a bumper 
house — as long as nothing was going for- 
ward ; but let the show-woman appear with 
an eye to a collection, and at the first rat- 
tle of the tambourine the audience slipped 
off the seats and stood round on the out- 
side, with their hands in their pockets. It 
certainly would have tried an angel's temper. 
The showman roared from the proscenium ; 
he had been all over France, and nowhere, 
nowhere, "not even on the borders of Ger- 



Prky and the Marionettes, 24 1 

many!' had he met with such misconduct. 
Such thieves, and rogues, and rascals as he 
called them ! And now and again the wife 
issued on another round, and added her shrill 
quota to the tirade. I remarked here, as 
elsewhere, how far more copious is the 
female mind in the material of insult. The 
audience laughed in high good-humor over 
the man's declamations ; but they bridled and 
cried aloud under the woman's pungent sal- 
lies. She picked out the sore points. She 
had the honor of the village at her mercy. 
Voices answered her angrily out of the crowd, 
and received a smarting retort for their 
trouble.' A couple of old ladies beside me, 
who had duly paid for their seats, waxed very 
red and indignant, and discoursed to each 
other audibly about the impudence of these 
mountebanks ; but as soon as the show- 
woman caught a whisper of this she was 
16 



242 An Inlaftd Voyage, 

down upon them with a swoop ; if mesdames 
could persuade their neighbors to act with 
common honesty, the mountebanks, she as- 
sured them, would be polite enough ; mes- 
dames had probably had their bowl of soup, 
and, perhaps, a glass of wine that evening; 
the mountebanks, also, had a taste for soup, 
and did not choose to have their little earn- 
ings stolen from them before their eyes. 
Once, things came as far as a brief personal 
encounter between the showman and some 
lads, in which the former went down as read- 
ily as one of his own marionettes to a peal of 
jeering laughter. 

I was a good deal astonished at this scene, 
because I am pretty well acquainted with the 
ways of French strollers, more or less artis- 
tic ; and have always found them singularly 
pleasing. Any stroller must be dear to the 
right-thinking heart ; if it were only as a living 



Pricy and the Marionettes, 243 

protest against offices and the mercantile 
spirit, and as something to remind us that 
life is not by necessity the kind of thing we 
generally make it. Even a German band, 
if you see it leaving town in the early morn- 
ing for a campaign in country places, among 
trees and meadows, has a romantic flavor 
for the imagination. There is nobody under 
thirty so dead but his heart will stir a 
little at sight of a gypsies' camp. " We 
are not cotton-spinners all " ; or, at least, not 
all through. There is some life in humanity 
yet; and youth will now and again find a 
brave word to say in dispraise of riches, and 
throw up a situation to go strolling with a 
knapsack. 

An Englishman has always special facili- 
ties for intercourse with French gymnasts ; 
for England is the natural home of gymnasts. 
This or that fellow, in his tights and span- 



244 ^^^ Inland Voyage. 

gles, is sure to know a word or two of Eng- 
lish, to have drunk English aff-n-ajf, and, per- 
haps, performed in an English music hall. 
He is a countryman of mine by profession. 
He leaps like the Belgian boating-men to 
the notion that T must be an athlete myself. 

But the gymnast is not my favorite ; he 
has little or no tincture of the artist in his 
composition ; his soul is small and pedes- 
trian, for the most part, since his profession 
makes no call upon it, and does not accustom 
him to high ideas. But if a man is only so 
much of an actor that he can stumble through 
a farce, he is made free of a new order of 
thoughts. He has something else to think 
about beside the money-box. He has a pride 
of his own, and, what is of far more impor- 
tance, he has an aim before him that he can 
never quite attain. He has gone upon a 
pilgrimage that will last him his life-long, 



Pricy and the Marionettes. 245 

because there is no end to it short of per- 
fection. He will better himself a little day 
by day ; or, even if he has given up the at- 
tempt, he will always remember that once 
upon a time he had conceived this high ideal, 
that once upon a time he fell in love with a 
star. *' 'T is better to have loved and lost." 
Although the moon should have nothing to 
say to Endymion, although he should settle 
down with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not 
think he would move with a better grace and 
cherish higher thoughts to the end.? The 
louts he meets at church never had a fancy 
above Audrey s snood; but there is a reminis- 
cence in Endymioiis heart that, like a spice, 
keeps it fresh and haughty. 

To be even one of the outskirters of art 
leaves a fine stamp on a man's countenance. 
I remember once dining with a party in the 
inn at Chateau Landon, Most of them 



246 Aji Inland Voyage. 

were unmistakable bagmen ; others well-to- 
do peasantry; but there was one young 
fellow in a blouse, whose face stood out from 
among the rest surprisingly. It looked more 
finished ; more of the spirit looked out 
through it ; it had a living, expressive air, 
and you could see that his eyes took things 
in. My companion and I wondered greatly 
who and what he could be. It was fair time 
in Chdteau Landon, and when we went along 
to the booths we had our question answered; 
for there was our friend busily fiddling for 
the peasants to caper to. He was a wander- 
ing violinist. 

A troop of strollers once came to the inn 
where I was staying, in the department of 
Seine et Marne. There were a father and 
mother; two daughters, brazen, blowsy hus- 
sies, who sang and acted, without an idea of 
how to set about either ; and a dark young 



Prky and the Marionettes, 247 

man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant house- 
painter, who sang and acted not amiss. The 
mother was the genius of the party, so far as 
genius can be spoken of with regard to such 
a pack of incompetent humbugs ; and her 
husband could not find words to express 
his admiration for her comic countryman. 
*' You should see my old woman," said he, 
and nodded his beery countenance. One 
night they performed in the stable-yard with 
flaring lamps : a wretched exhibition, coldly 
looked upon by a village audience. Next 
night, as soon as the lamps were lighted, 
there came a plump of rain, and they had to 
sweep, away their baggage as fast as possible, 
and make off to the barn, where they har- 
bored, cold, wet, and supperless. In the 
morning a dear friend of mine, who has as 
warm a heart for strollers as I have myself, 
made a little collection, and sent it by my 



248 An Inland Voyage. 

hands to comfort them for their disappoint- 
ment. I gave it to the father; he thanked 
me cordially, and we drank a cup together in 
the kitchen, talking of roads, and audiences, 
and hard times. 

When I was going, up got my old stroller, 
and off with his hat. *' I am afraid," said he, 
" that Monsieur will think me altogether a 
beggar ; but I have another demand to make 
upon him." T began to hate him on the spot, 
" We play again to-night," he went on. " Of 
course I shall refuse to accept any more 
money from Monsieur and his friends, who 
have been already so liberal. But our pro- 
gramme of to-night is something truly credit- 
able ; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur 
will honor us with his presence." And then, 
with a shrug and a smile : " Monsieur under- 
stands, — the vanity of an artist ! " Save the 
mark ! The vanity of an artist } That is the 



Pr^cy and'the Marionettes. 249 

kind of thing that reconciles me to Hfe : a 
ragged, tippling, incompetent old rogue, with 
the manners of a gentleman and the vanity 
of an artist, to keep up his self-respect ! 

But the man after my own heart is M. de 
Vauversin. It is nearly two years since I 
saw him first, and indeed I hope I may see 
him often again. Here is his first programme 
as I found it on the breakfast-table, and have 
kept it ever since as a relic of bright days: — 
** Mesdaines et Messieurs^ 

•* Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin 
auront r honneitr de chanter ce soir les morceanx 
suivants, 

*' Mademoiselle Ferrario chantera — Mignon 
— Oiseaux Legers — France — Des Franqais 
dorment la — Le chateau bleu — Oil voulez- 
vous aller ? 

" M. de Vauversin — Madame Fo7itai7te et 
M. Robinet — Les plongeurs d cheval — Le 



250 An Inland Voyage, 

Mart mecontent — Tais-toiy gamin — Mon voi- 
sin t' original — Heurenx cofume ga — Comrne 
071 est irompe," 

They made a stage at one end of the salle- 
a-manger. And what a sight it was to see M. 
de Vaiiversiuy with a cigarette in his mouth, 
twanging a guitar, and following Mademoi- 
selle Ferrarids eyes with the obedient, kindly 
look of a dog ! The entertainment wound 
up with a tombola, or auction of lottery 
tickets : an admirable amusement, with all 
the excitement of gambling, and no hope of 
gain to make you ashamed of your eagerness ; 
for there, all is loss ; you make haste to be 
out of pocket ; it is a competition who shall 
lose most money for the benefit of M. de 
Vauversin and Mademoiselle Ferrario. 

M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a 
great head of black hair, a vivacious and en- 
gaging air, and a smile that would be delight- 



PrScy and the Marionettes. 251 

fill if he had better teeth. He was once an 
actor in the Chdtelct ; but he contracted a 
nervous affection from the heat and glare of 
the foot-lights, which unfitted him for the 
stage. At this crisis Mademoiselle FerrariOy 
otherwise Mademoiselle Rita of the Alcazar^ 
agreed to share his wandering fortunes. " I 
could never forget the generosity of that 
lady," said he. He wears trousers so tight 
that it has long been a problem to all who 
knew him how he manages to get in and out 
of them. He sketches a little in water-colors, 
he writes verses ; he is the most patient of 
fishermen, and spent long days at the bottopi 
of the 'inn-garden fruitlessly dabbling a line 
in the clear river. 

You should hear him recounting his ex- 
periences over a bottle of wine ; such a 
pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready 
smile at his own mishaps, and every now and 



252 A7t Inland Voyage. 

then a sudden gravity, like a man who 
should hear the surf roar while he was telling 
the perils of the deep. For it was no longer 
ago than last night, perhaps, that the re- 
ceipts only amounted to a franc and a half 
to cover three francs of railway fare and two 
of board and lodging. The Maire, a man 
worth a million of money, sat in the front 
seat, repeatedly applauding Mile. Ferrario, 
and yet gave no more than three sous the 
whole evening. Local authorities look with 
such an evil eye upon the strolling artist. 
Alas ! I know it well, who have been myself 
taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on 
the strength of the misapprehension. Once, 
M. de Vaiiversin visited a commissary of 
police for permission to sing. The commis- 
sary, who was smoking at his ease, politely 
doffed his hat upon the singer's entrance. 
" Mr. Commissary," he began, " I am an 



Pr^cy and tJie Marionettes, 253 

artist." And on went the commissary's hat 
again. No courtesy for the companions of 
Apollo ! " They are as degraded as that," 
said M, de Vaiiversiny with a sweep of his 
cigarette. 

But what pleased me most was one out 
break of his, when we had been talking all 
the evening of the rubs, indignities, and 
pinchings of his wandering life. Some one 
said it would be better to have a million of 
money down, and Mile. Fcrrario admitted 
that she would prefer that mightily. ^' Eh 
bien, moi non ; — not I," cried De Vanvcrsuiy 
striking the table with his hand. " If any 
one is -a failure in the world, is it not I .^^ I 
had an art, in which I have done things well, 
— as well as some, better, perhaps, than 
others ; and now it is closed against me. I 
must go about the country gathering coppers 
and singing nonsense. Do you think I 



254 ^^^ htland Voyage. 

regret my life ? Do you think I would 
rather be a fat burgess, like a calf ? Not I ! 
I have had moments when I have been 
applauded on the boards : I think nothing of 
that ; but I have known in my own mind 
sometimes, when I had not a clap from the 
whole house, that I had found a true intona- 
tion, or an exact 'and speaking gesture ; and 
then, messieurs, I have known what pleasure 
was, what it was to do a thing well, what it 
was to be an artist. And to know what art 
is, is to have an interest forever, such as no 
burgess can find in his petty concerns. 
TeneSy messieurs , je vais vous le dircy — it is 
like a religion." 

Such, making some allowance for the 
tricks of memory and the inaccuracies of 
translation, was the profession of faith of M. 
de Vauversin. I have given him his own 
name, lest any other wanderer should come 



Pr^cy and the Marionettes. 255 

across him, with his guitar and cigarette, and 
Mademoiselle Ferrario ; for should not all 
the world delight to honor this unfortunate 
and loyal follower of the Muses ? May 
Apollo send him rhymes hitherto undreamed 
of ; may the river be no longer scanty of her 
silver fishes to his lure ; may the cold not 
pinch him on long winter rides, nor the 
village jack-in-office affront him with un- 
seemly manners ; and may he never miss 
Mademoiselle Ferrario from his side, to fol- 
low with his dutiful eyes and accompany on 
the guitar ! 

The marionettes made a very dismal enter- 
tainment. They performed a piece called 
Pyranms and Tliisbe, in five mortal acts, and 
all written in Alexandrines fully as long as 
the performers. One marionette was the 
king ; another the wicked counsellor ; a third, 
credited with exceptional beauty, represented 



256 Ajt Inland Voyage. 

Thisbe ; and then there were guards, and 
obdurate fathers, and walking gentlemen. 
Nothing particular took place during the two 
or three acts that I sat out ; but you will 
be pleased to learn that the unities were 
properly respected, and the whole piece, 
with one exception, moved in harmony with 
classical rules. That exception was the 
comic countryman, a lean marionette in 
wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and in a 
broad patois much appreciated by the audi- 
ence. He took unconstitutional liberties 
with the person of his sovereign ; kicked his 
fellow-marionettes in the mouth with his 
wooden shoes, and whenever none of the 
versifying suitors were about, made love to 
Thisbe on his own account m comic prose. 

This fellow's evolutions, and the little pro- 
loGfue, in which the showmanmade a humor- 
ous eulogium of his troop, praising their in- 



Pr^cy and the Marionettes. 257 

difference to applause and hisses, and their 
single devotion to their art, were the only cir- 
cumstances in the whole affair that you 
could fancy would so much as raise a smile. 
But the villagers of Precy seemed delighted. 
Indeed, so long as a thing is an exhibition, 
and you pay to see it, it is nearly certain to 
amuse. If we were charged so much a head 
for sunsets, or if God sent round a drum be- 
fore the hawthorns came in flower, what a 
work should we not make about their beauty ! 
But these things, like good companions, 
stupid people early cease to observe ; and the 
Abstract Bagman tittups past in his spring 
gig, and is positively not aware of the flowers 
along the lane, or the scenery of the weather 
overhead. 



17 



BACK TO THE WORLD. 

Of the next two days' sail little remains 
in my mind, and nothing whatever in my 
note-book. The river streamed on stead- 
ily through pleasant river-side landscapes. 
Washerwomen in blue dresses, fishers in 
blue blouses, diversified the green banks ; 
and the relation of the two colors was like 
that of the flower and the leaf in the foi^geU 
me-not. A symphony in forget-me-not ; I 
think Theophile Gautier might thus have 
characterized that two days' panorama. The 
sky was blue and cloudless ; and the sliding 
surface of the river held up, in smooth places, 
a mirror to the heaven and the shores. 
The washerwomen hailed us laughingly ; and 
the noise of trees and water made an accom- 



Back to the World. 259 

paniment to our dozing thoughts, as we 
fleeted down the stream. 

The great volume, the indefatigable pur- 
pose of the river, held the mind in chain. 
It seemed now so sure of its end, so strong 
and easy in its gait, like a grown man full of 
determination. The surf was roaring for it 
on the sands of Havre. For my own part 
slipping along this moving thoroughfare in 
my fiddle-case of a canoe, I also was begin- 
ning to grow aweary for my ocean. To the 
civilized man there must come, sooner or 
later, a desire for civilization. I was weary 
of dipping the paddle ; I was weary of liv- 
ing on the skirts of life ; I wished to be in 
the thick of it once more ; I wished to get to 
work ; I wished to meet people who under- 
stood my own speech, and could meet with 
me on equal terms, as a man, and no longer 
as a curiosity. 



26o An Inland Voyage. 

And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and 
we drew up our keels for the last time out of 
that river of Oise that had faithfully piloted 
them, through rain and sunshine, for so long. 
For so many miles had this fleet and foot- 
less beast of burden charioted our fortunes 
that we turned our back upon it with a sense 
of separation. We had a long detour out of 
the world, but now we were back in the 
familiar places, where life itself makes all 
the running, and we are carried to meet ad- 
venture without a stroke of the paddle. Now 
we were to return, like the voyager i^i the 
play, and see what rearrangements fortune 
had perfected the while in our surroundings ; 
what surprises stood ready made for us at 
home; and whither and how far the world had 
voyaged in our absence. You may paddle 
all day long ; but it is when you come back 
at nightfall, and look in at the familiar 



Back to the World. 261 

room, that you find Love or Death awaiting 
you beside the stove ; and the most beau- 
tiful adventures are not those we go to 
seek. 



Messrs. Roberts BrotJiers Publications, 

TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

IN THE CEVENNES. 

By ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 

With Frontispiece Illustration by Walter Crane. i6mo. 
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From the London Athenceum, March i, 1879. 

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collected works of the famous Greek philosopher. They are companion volumes, 
the text being taken unabridged from Professor Jewett's revised translation of Plato. 
They tell the whole story of the trial, imprisonment and death of Socrates. The 
Apology gives the defence, the Crito relates the offer of escape, the Phaedo describes 
the last hours. The more studiously and the more frequently these books are read 
the more keen will be the appreciation of their intellectual and moral.excellence." — 
Providence Journal. 



JEAN INGELOWS NOVELS. Off the Skelligs; 
Fated to be Free; Sarah de Berenger; Don John. 

A new edition. 4 vols. i6mo. Imitation half calf. 

Price ^5-oo 



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post-paid on receipt of advertised price. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



A LITTLE PILGRIM. Reprinted from Macmillan's 

Magazine. i6mo. Cloth. Red edges. Price, .... ^ .75 

" An exquisitely written little sketch is found in that remarkable production, ' The 
Little Pilgrim,' which is just now attracting much attention both in Europe and 
America. It is highly imaginative in its scope, representing one of the world-worn 
and weary pilgrims of our earthly sphere as entering upon the delights of heaven 
after death. The picture of heaven is drawn with the rarest delicacy and refinement, 
and is in agreeable contrast in this respect to the material sketch of this future home 
furnished in Miss Stuart Phelps's well-remembered 'Gates Ajar.' The book will be 
a balm to the heart of many readers who are in accord with the faith of its author; 
and to others its reading will afford rare pleasure from the exceeding beauty and 
affecting simplicity of its almost perfect literary style." — Saturday Evening Gazette. 

"The life beyond the grave, when the short life in this world is ended, is to many 
a source of dread — to all a mystery. 'A Little Pilgrim' has apparently solved it, 
and, indeed, it seems on reading this little_ book as if there were a great probability 
about it. A soft, gentle tone pervades its every sentence, and one cannot read it 
without feeling refreshed and strengthened." — The Alta California. 

THE GREAT EPICS OF MEDIEVAL GERMANY. 

An Outline of their Contents and History. By George 
Theodore Dippold, Professor at Boston University and 
Wellesley College. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50 

Professor Francis J. Child, of Harvard College, says : " It is an excellent account 
of the chief Gtrman heroic poems of the Middle Ages, accompanied with spirited 
translations. It is a book which gives both a brief and popular, and also an accurate, 
account of this important section of literature, and will be very welcome here and at 
other colleges." 

"No student of modern literature, and above all no student who aims to under- 
stand the literary development of Europe in its fullest range, can leave this rich and 
ample world of early song unexplored. To all such Professor Dippold's book will 
have the value of a trustworthy guide. _ . . . It has all the interest of a 
chapter in the growth of the human mind into comprehension of the universe and of 
itself, and it has the pervading charm of the vast realm of poetry through which it 
moves." — Christian Ujiion. 



MY HOUSEHOLD OF PETS. By Theophile Gautier. \ 
Translated from the French by Susan Coolidge. With 

illustrations by Frank Rogers. i6mo. Cloth. Price, . $1.25 ^ 

" This little book will interest lovers of animals, and the quaint style in which \ 
M. Gautier tells of the wisdom of his household pets will please every one. The 

translator, too, is happy in her work, for she has succeeded in rendering the text into ' 

English without loss of the French tone, which makes it fascinating. These house- ] 

hold pets consisted of white and black cats, dogs, chameleons, lizards, magpies, and i 

horses, each of which has a character and story of its own. Illustrations and a pretty ' 
binding add to the attractions of the volume." — Worcester Spy. 

"The ease and elegance of Theophile Gautier's diction is wonderful, and the , 

translator has preserved the charm of the French author with far more than the 1 
average fidelity. ' My Household of Pets ' is a book which can be read with pleasure 

by young and old. It is a charming volume. — St. Louis Spectator. ^ 



^*.^ Our publications are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent 
post-paid on receipt of advertised price. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



THE JEAN INGELOW BIRTHDAY BOOK. With 

red-line border and divisions, 12 illustrations and portrait. 

i6mo. Cloth, gilt and illuminated. Price, $1.00 

Full calf or morocco, $3.50 

"This is a dainty little volume having a selection from Jean Ingelow for each day 
of the year. The extracts are of both prose and verse. There are graceful illustra- 
tions for each month suited in subject to the season. The book will be welcomed by 
admirers of this writer and must prove a popular gift-book for the birthday season." — 
Chicago A dvance. 

"We have seen no more tasteful book this year than 'The Jean Ingelow Birthday 
Book,' which Messrs. Roberts Brothers publish. It is somewhat larger in form than 
are the birthday books with which the public is familiar, is printed on very fine paper, 
and has a page with the usual quotations and the usual blanks, tb.e whole encircled 
with a carmine line border, the date of the days of the months being printed in the 
same color. The work is illustrated with handsome engravings, and has a steel- 
engraved portrait of Jean Ingelow. The binding is a real gem. Nothing could well 
be more attractive in the way of cloth ornament than is its combination of design and 
color." — Sattirday Eveniiig Gazette. 



UNDER THE SUN. By Phil. Robinson, the new 

English Humorist. With a Preface by Edwin Arnold, 

author of "The Light of Asia." i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50 

This is a volume of essays, humorous and pathetic, of incidents, scenes, and 
objects grouped under the heads: Indian Sketches, The Indian Seasons, Unnatural 
History, Idle Hours under the Punkah. 

"Under the Sun," by Phil. Robinson, is one of the most delightful of recent 
books. The style is fascinating in its strength and picturesqueness, and there is now 
and then a delicious quaintness that recalls Charles Lamb. A volume such as this is 
rare in our day, when the art of essay writing is almost lost and forgotten. Fresh- 
ness, vigor, humor, pathos, graphic power, a keen love for nature, a gentle love for 
animals, and a pleasing originality are among the more charming characteristics of 
this work, which maybe read again and again with renewed satisfaction. Its scenes 
are laid in India, and whether the author discourses of the elephant, the rhinoceros, 
some bird that has attracted his attention, a tree, or a flower; whether he describes 
an exciting hunt, or tells a marvellous story ; whether he moralizes or gives free rein 
to his fancy, he is always brilliant, fascinating, vivacious and masterly. It is difficult 
to write of this remarkable book withou*- superlatives ; but it is not too much to insist 
that it is impossible to exaggerate its peculiar merits, or to bestow too large a share of 
praise upon it. It is not a book for the few, but for the many, and all will find delight 
in its perusal." — Saturday Everting Gazette. 



^** Our publications are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent 
post-paid on receipt of advertised price. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



NATURAL RELIGION. The long-expected book by the 
author of "Ecce Homo." Second edition, with a new 
explanatory preface. Uniform with "Ecce Homo." 
i6mo. Cloth. Price, ^1-25 

"Sixteen years ago 'Ecce Homo' took the place of the drawing-room novel in 
English and American society, and was the best-read book of the day. It looked at 
Jesus Christ throush the eyes of the modern man and attempted to answer the 
question : What was Christ's object in founding tlie society which was called by his 
name, and how is it adapted to attain that object? It drew attention to the way in 
which Christ dealt with human society as a whole. It constructed anew the kingdom 
of God in the world, not by retracing iis history as an institution, but by buildmg it 
up from the affirmations of Christ into the republic of God. The author of * Ecce 
Homo' has now spoken again with the view of showing Christ as the creator of 
modern theology and religion, or rather of showing how far the republic of God, as 
set up in the world through the agency of J.^sus Christ, fulfills its functions in the last 
quarter of the nineteenth century. The bold hand that stripped from the name of 
Christ the thousand superstitions that surrounded him, here deals with Christianity as 
he then dealt with its originator, and the same strong criticism, the same fearless 
assertion of fundamental principles, the same comprehensiveness of view, the same 
desire to explain by natural, what has so often been remanded to supernatural forces, 
the same grasp of the eihical convictions of men, appears in ' Natural Religion ' that 
startled thinking people in the pages of ' Ecce Homo.' . . . What distinguishes 
the author of 'Ecce Homo' is that, in his present criticism of Christianity, h.e is 
aiming to induce the leaders of Christianity to include the larger truth which the 
world has consciously gained and which is in the nature of a divine revelation within 
the sphere of Christian truth. . . . The freshest and most constructive criticism 
of Christianity that has yet appeared." — Sunday Herald. 



RARE POEMS OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEV- 
ENTEENTH CENTURIES. Collected and edited,' 
with Notes, by W. J. Linton. One volume. i6mo. 
Parchment cloth, red lettered. Price, ^2.00 

"These ' rare poems' are not to be found in any anthology accessible to general 
readers. It is indeed a ' rare ' book culled from the world garden of old English Song, 
and in the accuracy of its scholarship and the clearness of its contents exceeds any 
and every other book of the kind. Some ninety-odd illustrations, engraved by Mr. 
Linton, give additional interest to this beautiful volume." 

"This is one of the charming books of the season. It is an excursion into the by- 
paths of early poetical literature, and the true lover of poetry will enjoy the sense of 
seclusion which comes from the companionship of poems not to be found in the 
popular anthologies. There is a charm about these old-time verses which is as real 
as it is impalpable. They strike a note which has dropped out of the modern scale; 
we have much notably fine music, but the melody of the old poets is gone. That is 
not saying that the present age is less favored than that represented in this volume ; 
it is only saying that they are different. Mr. Linton has culled many of the sweetest 
flowers of early English song, and has embellished them with dainty devices of 
illustration so entirely felicitous and appropriate that they seem to have grown out of 
the verse itself. Heywood, Sidney, Suckling, Herrick, all the sweet singers of the 
age are represented by some choice poem. The selection, arrangement, illustration, 
and the concise and suggestive notes, give unmistakable evidence of _ a trained and 
scholarly hand, and the result is a dainty and beautiful book which will endear itself 
to all lovers of English song." — Christian Union. 



^* ^ Our publications are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent 
post-paid on receipt of advertised price. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



PHYLLIS BROWNE. A Story. By Flora L. Shaw. 
Author of "Castle Blair" and "Hector." i6mo. Cloth. 
Illustrated. Price, $,i.oo 

'"Castle Blair' and 'Hector' are such good stories that a third, by the same 
author, Flora L. Shaw, will be equally welcomed. ' Hector '_ was one of the most 
charming books ever written about a boy. * Phyllis Browne ' is the new story. She 
is evidently the author's ideal girl, as Hector was her ideal boy, and a noble, splendid 
girl she is. Yet the book is not a child's book; it is a6ou^ children, but not for them. 
The story is far more interesting than most novels are, and far more exciting. The 
rash generosity of the children is beautiful ; their free, trustful lives are noble and 
sweet ; but when they undertake to right social wrongs, and gallantly set their brave 
hearts and childish inexperience against the established wrongs of society, they come 
to grief, but in no commonplace way. Their dangers are as unusual and on as large 
a scale as their characters and courage are. The book is full of tender and loving 
things; it makes the heart larger, and brings back the splendid dreams of one's own 
youth," says the Boston correspondent of the IVorcester Spy. 



THE MARQUIS OF CARABAS. A Romance. By 
Harriet Prescott Spofford, author of "The Amber 
Gods," "The Thief in the Night," etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, ^i.oo 

"This is the latest offering of the author of 'The Amber Gods,' and it is as odd as 
striking, and as impressive in its shadowy implication as anything she has ever 
written. Handled differently, the incidents would seem theatrical ; as told by Mrs. 
Spofford, the story is like the vivid passages of a drama from which, once seen, jrou 
cannot escape. Pleasant or unpleasant they force themselves iipon the consideration 
and lay hold of the imagination. So it is with ' The Marquis of Carabas-' " — Chicago 
Inter-Ocean. 

" 'The Marquis of Carabas,' by Harriet Prescott Spofford, is a work of unique 
quality, being really a poem in the guise of a prose novel. The thought is tense and 
sublimated, and the style glowing, musical and polished. There is abundant inven- 
tion in the story, and nothing of common-place and indolent imitation which in the 
case of ordinary raconteurs contributes so largely to swell the bulk of results. The 
narrative fascinates one, but the fascination is not of a stream flowing largely and 
naturally through the landscape ; it is rather that of silver bells, whose clear, finely 
modulated chimes touch the finer issues of feeling, but not without some obtrusive 
sense of study and premeditation." — Home Journal. 



LANDOR'S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS. 

With a portrait. A new edition. 5 volumes. i6mo. 

Cloth. Oxford style. Price, ^5-00 

Imitation half calf, 6.25 



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ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



WIT AND WISDOM OF DON QUIXOTE. 

"Patch Grief with Proverbs." — Shakespeare. "j 

With a Biographical Sketch of Cervantes and illustrations. 
One volume, uniform with "Wit and Wisdom of George 
Eliot." Square i6mo. Cloth, black and gilt lettered. 
Price, $1.25 , 

" This handsomely bound volume is what it purports to be, a compilation of the i 

best things in Dott Quixote. The book will be of especial benefit to those who wish ! 

to recall in conversation or writing the many sensible and apt words of the famous ' 

knight or his sturdy, common-sense squire, Sancho Panza. To this end, the gen- i 

eral 'Index' and ' Index to Proverbs' will be found of great service. The twenty- , 

five pages devoted to the biography of Cervantes, the author of Doti Quixote, \ 

written by Emma Thompson, add to the value of the book." 1 

" In certain respects this volume is better for the use of the young man than the I 
complete work, as it does not contain any of those passages in which prurient igno- • 
ranee may see something amiss, and even those who know the original well may 
surely be content to take this book up, and find in it everything which they would 
select for themselves in looking through the familiar pages. A biographical sketch 
of the author, an index, and an index to the proverbs add to the value of the work, 
which is bound in an attractive way, and ought to be one of the favorite gift-books 
among persons of literary taste. — Sunday Budget, 



OUR LIBERAL MOVEMENT IN THEOLOGY, 

chiefly as shown in Recollections of the History of Uni- 
tarianism in New England. By Joseph Henry Allen, 
Lecturer on Ecclesiastical History in Harvard University. 
i6mo. Cloth. Price $1.25 

" It is a review of the history and antecedents of New England Unitarianism, 
interspersed with interesting personal reminiscences, and ending with an appreciation 
of the tendencies of modern liberal theology and a forecast of the future." — N. V, 
Tritutie. 

"The first five of these lectures give a very readable and interesting sketch and 
criticism of the history of Unitarianism in New England. These are followed by 
three lectures, the subjects of which are: A Scientific Theology; The Religionof 
Humanity ; and The Gospel of Liberalism. The book is a valuable and instructive 
study of what Unitarianism is and how it came to be what it is." —New Englander. 

" The chapters are well-composed and well-informing, and the style of the writer is 
clear and engaging. He writes of that in which he believes, and does not allow him- 
self to drift far from his subject. The work constitutes a very fair and convenient 
hand-book on the Unitarian movement, certainly an historical movement, and one 
which has left its impress upon the religious thinking of all denominations. We 
welcome the book as a just and entertaining presentation of a form of belief which 
has found more or less acceptance among us." — Standard, Chicago. 



j,^*^ Our publications are for sale by all booksellers, or will be sent 
post-paid on receipt of advertised price. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



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